


More Grimm Tales

by wolf_shadoe



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Wolf-Spike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:48:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 130,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25213453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolf_shadoe/pseuds/wolf_shadoe
Summary: A somewhat fluffy sequel to my Little Red Riding Hood oneshot.With all of the books thrown back in the blender, and no apologies for odd language, wild jumps in style, or general randomness.(but many, many apologies for some temporary and yicky Angel-pining)
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	1. Lie To Me

**Author's Note:**

> The first of a few chapters of prologue... or of part one... or something... before we shake off canon's restraining hand ;)  
> Dialogue in canon scenes from canon.

Once upon a week (night) later, certain events brought the little slayer and the big bad no-longer-furry vampire to their next crossing of swords.

For the slayer, patrols had been almost boring all week (almost, because 'boring' was something she knew never to dare complain of on the hellmouth). The only vampires she had come across had been mindless fledges, and she was still itching with restlessness over the events of Halloween. During the days following, Angel had seemed to be especially adroit at doing what he did so well, vamooshing into thin air right when she wanted to pin him down and get some straight answers, and the longer she had to wait… the more duped she was beginning to feel. It was hard to keep reminding herself that she was not being led on when the only evidence to the contrary was a big blank patch of nothing.   


So when the slayer looked down from one of her favourite rooftop watchtowers and found Angel standing in the playground below, a burst of ire had leapt up even before she noticed the girl - nay, woman - that he was standing with.   


Pale skin, pearl necklace, thin white dress entirely unsuitable for a child's playground at midnight; either she was a vampire, or the nearest care facility had lost a patient. Padding silently over to crouch at the nearest edge of the roof, Buffy watched as the woman drifted even closer to Angel, slippered feet seeming to nearly float through the short grass in a fashion that lent credence to the 'vampire' theory of classification.   


Angel's back was to Buffy, making it hard for her to judge his reaction to the new intimacy of the woman's position, but he did not appear altogether averse to miss spooky-in-the-playground getting further into his personal space. He certainly looked at least as welcoming as he was whenever Buffy attempted the same.

"Drusilla, leave here," Angel was saying, the deep tones of his voice carrying easily in the still night air.   


_ Drusilla.  _ So she had a name.   


Angel continued in a harsh rush, "I'm offering you that chance. Take Spike, and get out."   


_ Wow, okay… _ It wasn’t like they were best buddies or anything, but she didn't think Spike seemed like the sort to be 'taken' anywhere. More like the sort who would carjack the tour bus and drive it into a river just to see if it could float.   


Drusilla had moved even closer while Buffy contemplated that picture, saying something in a sing-songy rhythm which Buffy couldn’t make out and extending a creepily skeletal hand towards Angel's chest. Then she stepped back again, her (unsettlingly beautiful) face strangely vacant.   


"If you don't leave," Angel said, low and urgent, "it'll go badly. For all of us."

_ All of us. _ That list of answers she wanted? Growing exponentially by the moment. Buffy strained her ears, listening intently to catch their next words.

Drusilla looked back over her shoulder at the darkness, something wistful and sad falling over her posture. "My dear boy's gone all away, hasn't he?" she asked, turning back to Angel and tilting her head on an angle as though to listen to something overhead. "To her."

"Who?" Angel asked.   


Drusilla looked up, past Angel's shoulder, and Buffy’s breath froze in her chest as those over-large eyes seemed to stare straight through her camouflage of shadows. "The girl. The slayer," Drusilla told Angel, turning her gaze back to him. When he didn't turn to look behind him, she added, " _ Your _ heart stinks of her." One of those pale hands reached out again, settling on Angel's chest. "Poor little thing," she said, her voice growing even softer, yet also somehow directed out now to reach Buffy’s maybe not-so-hidden spot. "She has no idea what's in store."

"This can't go on, Drusilla," Angel said firmly. "It's gotta end."

Drusilla tilted her head the other way, listening, then stretched her lips up towards Angel's ear. "Oh, no, my pet.  _ This is just the beginning, _ " she told him. Or her. Or both of them.   


Then she stepped back, dropping her hands, and melted away into the darkness.

Buffy stayed rigidly frozen in place as Angel stared after Drusilla for a long moment. Then he turned and hurried off in the opposite direction, glancing back behind himself several times. Buffy relaxed her muscles with a silent sigh, mind tripping over itself as it bubbled with new questions. 

  
  


_ Drusilla _ , Buffy read (for she was discovering a new appreciation for certain research materials in her watcher's collection), was one corner of a quartet which had been known as The Whirlwind in the late nineteenth century. Angelus, Darla, Spike, Drusilla. Drusilla was supposed to be dust in the wind, according to an excited report from a watcher stationed near Prague, printed out and tucked neatly into the back of the book. But someone had obviously been too hasty, and wasn't Sunnydale proving just the place for family reunions? Darla was definitely gone, of course, and Buffy now had to reconsider the gravity of Angel's action in staking her in the light of this new chapter of their recorded history together. He'd cared for Darla, that much had been plain at the time, and they'd been together for… more than a century, by her reckoning, before he'd been given his soul and turned his back on that life. Yet he'd still chosen to do what was right when push came to bullets. Whatever was going on now between him and Drusilla - whatever his reasons for having lied when she'd asked him what he'd been doing on the night in question - Buffy could probably trust him not to be exactly against her if it came to a fight.   


Trust, unlike Ford. It gave her a sick feeling in her stomach every time she thought of it, which was constantly right now, but she had to face it - Ford had lied. Lied in a big, deceptive-y way.  _ And  _ it had cost Giles a book. (Giles was very attached to his books, and with the objects being all with the relevant-if-occasionally-incorrect information lately, it behoved her to be extra-protectey of them). The whys and what-fors of Ford's deceit she would have to dig out tomorrow; right now, she was going home to focus on something simple and honest, like her neglected algebra homework. And certainly not the complexity and dishonesty of her not-quite-a-relationship with Angel.

  
  
  


Meanwhile, the creature formerly known as our wicked vampire was feeling frazzled; so much so, in fact, that he barely had the concentration spare to snipe that his name was  _ Spike  _ and not some pretentious epithet. His more consuming problem was the fact that as soon as he had decided he wanted nothing more than to avoid the slayer and all things related thereto, the fates seemed to be conspiring to put her in front of him every which-ways he turned.   


If he was to leave Sunnydale, a course of action which he had very lately deemed necessary to hold open on the table, then he had first to achieve at least one of his objectives in coming there. The plan had been sound: travel to hellmouth. Kill slayer. Feed slayer's blood to Dru, hope it would be the magic potion needed to heal her at last from damage done in Prague. Revel in third slayer to his name. Simple. And it even had a Plan B: should the slayer's blood prove insufficient, investigate multitude of other options sure to be available on world's largest hellmouth. Which was lucky, because with Drusilla carrying on about the immortal danger in tasting the girl, it was probably not a good idea to try to feed her to her. So, time to investigate those other options.   


Dalton, prissy little nerd that he was, had spent two solid days and nights making enquiries of various texts and local creatures, then announced that the book he required most profoundly was in the private collection of one Sunnydale watcher. Minions were dispatched; after an unexpected run-in with She of the Sharpened Bits of Wood, only one of them returned. And bookless, to boot.

The surviving minion was dispatched again the following night, with the clear understanding that she would be  _ dispatched  _ for returning empty-handed a second time. But while he awaited the outcome of that wee endeavour, snivelling minion Lucius presented himself with rumours of events two nights past and which no one had got up the gumption to notify him of thus far. Drusilla had been out. And, she had met with Angel.   


"What might you guys have talked about, then?" he asked, having to work to keep hotter emotion in check. "Old times? Childhood pranks? It's a little off, you two so friendly, him being the enemy and all that." More than 'a little off'. 'Deeply unsettling' a better fit really, but there were ways to wind things out of a close-lipped Dru, and going in sideways was usually the best of them.   


She changed the subject, fussing over her dead bird until his grip slipped and he snapped at her. Then it was tears and guilty contrition and trying to get home the fact that he worried because she was weak and the night dangerous in the slayer's stomping ground, never mind the more sinister threat that was Angel-Angelus, and  _ jesus fuck couldn't he relax in one fucking direction at least?   
_

But before that spilt out, he was interrupted. And thus here was the third place in less days that his path collided with the slayers, in the form of one doomed teenager offering to trade 1 slayer's life for their very own shot at immortality. And… perhaps the third time was the charm. He had, after all, just been handed his much-needed book by a certain triumphant minion.

"Yeah," he told Ford brightly, "why not?"

  
  
  


Buffy’s perfectly boring and brain-consuming homework session was not to be. She had just prepared a mug of cocoa to fortify herself with when Angel approached her home's back door and pushed it open hesitantly.   


"Buffy," he said. "May I come in?"

"Sure,” she said non-committally. “I thought once you were invited you could always just walk in."

"I can. I was just being polite." He closed the door. "We need to talk."

_ Oh, do we ever. _

  
  


By the time he left again she had a dull headache sneaking up behind her eyes, driving a sullen urge to crawl under her blankets and stay there until next week.  _ Everyone  _ was keeping secrets. And somehow airing them out only made each facet of them grow more complicated.   


She'd got the facts she'd asked for from Angel; got them in the heated, strangled tones of someone almost wanting to punish her for asking.

She'd made a declaration of love and a denial of trust, and couldn't help wondering whether she should have put them the other way around. But put on the spot, she couldn’t lie. Her heart ached in time with the despairing,  _ lonely _ guilt on Angel's face, and though she'd hotly insisted that she ought to be the one to decide how she felt, she knew there was no decision in it. This feeling, chest-squeezing and contorting, bottomless and all-smothering, could only be called love. Or insanity. 

  
  
  


Everything was going swimmingly, to begin with. He took the DeSoto, handing Dru in like the queen she was. Had his doubts about the wiseness of bringing her along, but she insisted, and if he was honest, the practicalities of bringing an only half-drained slayer across town back to her were even more dubious a proposition. The crew followed in the non-descript blue sedan one of the newbies had come accessorised with, and everyone arrived without incident. It was tough work keeping minions in line, work he hated, but they seemed to be getting the message at last after several swift and dusty firings. And he needed them, for now.   


A pretty little doe-eyed thing met him just inside the door, too deluded to be afraid, too stupid to run. A veal calf blinking shyly at her slaughterer. She flinched at his snarl, heartbeat leaping deliciously, but still stood her ground on those wobbly calf legs. He tore the velvet collar from her neck, prompting tears, and was filled with a bolt of disgust for the whole scenario. She should fear the darkness, fear the night which cloaked creatures such as him; look around at the sodding  _ hellmouth  _ she lived on and think about staying home safe at night while the slayer worked her little behind off for her protection. It was rude, really. Disrespectful. And only right that he should give her a lesson in sensible self-defence. Course, she'd be dead at the end of it, but those were the breaks.

"Take them all," he ordered the crew. "Save the Slayer for me." No point losing anyone unnecessarily for getting in her way. She'd pop out from somewhere any moment now, no doubt, and come flying for the worthiest opponent on offer (himself). And then he could finally conclude the battle that had been invading his thoughts in every quiet moment.   


He grabbed the little mooncalf by her soft throat and jerked her forwards to begin tearing into it as the rest of the gang surged forth with a roar. An amuse-gueule was just the thing to whet and wet his appetite, and get the slayer's blood up to temperature besides. 

  
  


  
Buffy blinked back the last of the brain-fuzz from Ford's backhand/stair-tumble/crowbar combo, and swiftly evaluated her surroundings as she sprung to her feet.  _ Crowbar, incoming rapidly _ . She caught Ford's arm behind it mid-swing and redirected his momentum to spin him head-first into the nearest concrete pillar. He went out like a light, and she just as firmly slammed off any emotional response to the way his familiar form fell limply to the dingy floor. Immediate personal danger taken care of, she moved onto the wider picture.  _ Survey, calculate, respond.  _ Funny how clear and calm Giles's voice in her head could sound at times like these.   


_ Survey _ . All around her, Spike's lackeys were falling on the wannabe-vamp-allies like a pack of excited foxhounds.  _ Calculate.  _ Hounds easily halted individually, but too numerous for her to be able to get through even half of them before these people started dying. Best practice guidelines said start with the nearest, do your best, accept casualties of self or innocents as par for the course (and hadn't these idiots asked for it anyway?).  _ No.   
_

Best practice guidelines were rarely suitable and currently unacceptable.   


So, back to the beginning. Look at the scenario again. _There._ Standing alone on the raised landing like a cloistered princess, still in the same white dress, her attention on the mayhem below. Her skin was beyond deathly pale under the light, bloodless as cold marble, and something in the way she held herself spoke of painful frailty, which, could vampires _get_ sick? _Ask Giles. Later._ _Save people now_.   


When you're outnumbered, cheat. Buffy’s wild, wolfish opponent might be fang-deep in some poor girl's neck, but more than a century of recorded history hinted that the wraith-like woman watching from above must be holding some form of leash, and that was exactly what Buffy needed here.

_ Respond.  _ Three running steps up onto the back of the nearest couch, leap, grab railing, swing over. Her feet landed smoothly on the landing behind Drusilla, and Buffy had one arm around her in a chokehold and a stake poised at her chest before she could do more than look over in surprise.   


Drusilla let out a small, startled  _ eep _ of a yelp, her chilly body tightening with fear against Buffy’s. Her hair smelt of long-dead roses; heady, but faded and blurring. Her icy chest shivered under Buffy’s palm, quivering like the breastbone of a tiny bird snatched up in a hand. A tiny  _ lethal  _ bird. Also, tall. Buffy had to lean around her shoulder to face Spike where he stood on the stairs.   


"Spike!" she snapped, her voice sharply authoritative to slice through the assorted growls, snarls, and screams of the rabble below.   


He tore his teeth back out of his errant victim to turn to her, first in eagerness, then with a sort of frozen tension as he took in her position. "Everybody STOP!" he roared, deadly serious and without a fraction of hesitation.   


They did. Victims whimpered and wobbled below as their attackers paused mid-feast, and amber-eyed gazes swivelled to Spike attentively. Spike released the girl he'd been chewing, lowering his arms and shifting his whole posture to one that clearly broadcast passivity.   


_ Game over _ . "Good idea," she told him. "Now you let everyone out, or your girlfriend fits in an ashtray." She adjusted the position of her stake slightly, message clear. No one was playing now.

His ferocious yellow eyes bore into her, at once both promising some hideous end for her if she made good on her threat, and desperately begging her not to take this further beyond the established borders of the screwed-up and deadly battle they'd had between them privately. He pressed his teeth into the edge of his lip, frustration at his utter powerlessness to stop her clear, then ordered the others in a tight, level voice, "Let them go!"

Everyone did, complying swiftly and without a word of complaint. Wannabe-vampire kids began hurrying up the stairs, brushing past Spike's back in their eagerness to get the hell out.  _ Finally, some base survival instincts.  _ The staggering wounded were helped by the more altruistic of their peers, and in seconds the last of them were fleeing out the door.   


"Down the stairs," she ordered Spike quietly.   


He backed down, every movement slow and smooth, calculated not to risk startling her. His head ducked, bowed slightly, golden eyes lowering in submission, and for a moment she saw him as the wolf again, cocky ears falling back and tail tucking under. The very small, fear-filled growl that whispered from him only added to the image.   


Gripping tight, she pushed Drusilla along in front of her as she edged across to the exit. In the doorway she paused, watching Spike watching her, holding the moment where she held everything in the next motion of her hands. If she did the proper thing here and shoved Drusilla forward without removing her stake hand, he might (just maybe) get very lucky and tear her limb from limb for it, but he'd still have lost. He knew it. She knew it. And he'd already dipped way over the line to get here, buying her spot in this setup attempt as if her death was a tradeable commodity.  _ Unsporting, Spike _ . But there were  _ best practice guidelines _ , and then there was the way he'd bowed out when her mother cut in. And there was the crumpled form of an old friend on the floor below. She could be the honourable one here, take satisfaction in the higher ground of it, and slam back up the understanding that this was between  _ them,  _ not whatever creature he might make of Ford.

She gave him a final hard look;  _ cross me like this again… _ Then she bodily threw miss cold-and-creepy at him, and bolted out of the backwards-deadbolted door. 

  
  
  


"What happened?" asked a bleary voice.   


The boy. Had damn clean forgot about him in the more pressing concerns of soothing Dru and squelching this inappropriate feeling of having been chastened for some kind of shameful behaviour. What the hell did the chit expect? Vampire here, lawless and anarchic, free to do whatever he damn well pleased to achieve his goal of exsanguinating her. Slayer had no bleeding right to look so furiously disappointed in him.   


Even if she had picked up his own discarded rulebook and smacked him over the head with it.   


Even if he was oh-so-glad that she had. For all of Dru's carrying-on, there wasn't a scratch on her. Just the hot-spiced scent of the slayer's skin where she'd pressed herself against her. Just the barest warning hint of polished wood and sugar-cookie hand cream.   


"We're stuck in a basement," he bit out to Ford. Snip.

"Buffy?" the arsehole asked, rubbing his head where she must have clobbered him.

"She's  _ not _ stuck in the basement." Snap.

"Hey, well, I delivered," Ford reasoned. "I handed her to you."

God but he hated wankers like this. Acting all familiar and irreproachable, as though he hadn't just sold out his last friend and expected Spike to jump to be his next one.  _ He _ was the shameful bastard here. Slayer had just misdirected to the proxy in front of her at the time. "Yes, I suppose you did," he said, easing closer.

"So? What about my reward?"

Spike let a slow smile spread, surety flooding back. He was going to enjoy this.

  
  


He cut the wanker off after a few desperate gulps, shuddering in disgust at the way the boy's tongue slid desperately across the bleeding palm Spike held to his mouth. Dropped him to the floor with a small shove of recoil, and stepped away to wipe his hand off on the nearest couch while Dru moved in. Ford's chest was moving only in erratic little convulsions now, his mouth gasping weakly at the air like a landed fish's, and the unseeing haze of death was already claiming his eyes. More than safe enough for his girl to toy over finishing off.   


By the time the crew had pried the basement door open those eyes were dead and drying, colour drained from the cretin's skin to paint instead Dru's dainty lips and the hem of her dress. Beautiful.   


He extended a hand to her with a small bow, and she giggled prettily as she took it to rise to her feet. He lowered his head to lap a streak of red off the hand he held, mind jumping forward to when they would get home and he could lick clean the rest of her, chasing the stranger's scent from her porcelain skin with each teasing rasp of his tongue. Removing the sugar-spice linger of Buffy, too.

Then Dru dropped his hand to point hers at one of the minions, then down at the body by her feet.

"Ah, pet," he cautioned, stopping Garth in his tracks where he'd moved to obey and collect the boy, "we're not keeping him." Had promised it somewhere in there, in the silent bargaining to save his princess. Unspoken or no, his word had to hold.

Garth looked between them nervously, knowing right well that appearing to disobey an order from either of them would result in a dusting from both.

Drusilla's eyes grew cold, dark and distant doorways to some long-forgotten solar system far beyond the touch of any sun. "I must have a night," she whispered intently, or maybe it was  _ knight,  _ but he didn’t want to consider the potential implications of that. "Will you deny me for  _ her?" _ There was venom in the last words; sinuous, whispering threat wrapping around the edges of his mind.   


He broke from the spell of her, shifting his weight and cocking his head down at the cooling body in question. "Cunt's a traitor," he said flatly, firmly, without looking at her. "Like to turn us over to the slayer as happily as he did her to us, soon as it suits him. Garth, go warm the car up.  _ Now. _ " Garth went.   


Drusilla's eyes still burnt into the back of his skull, but he ignored them, headcounting the remaining minions and appraising the room for any loot worth taking. "Lucius, Julia," he snapped. "Load up the bar. Aiden, till. I want everyone out in five, and  _ don't  _ get lost on the way home this time." Grabbing Dru's hand, he led her firmly up the stairs, feeling his pocket for a stake to take care of Garth if the blighter opened his mouth.   


Dru let herself be led, attention drifting off again, but he couldn't entirely shake the sense of foreboding she'd awoken. Sooner they could blow this damn town the better.


	2. What's My Line

Angel was in her bedroom. Buffy paused on the porch roof outside of her window, watching him peruse the trinkets on her top shelf. Hot on the heels of the first flush of warmth she felt at finding him waiting came that damn spidery whisper again; that dry, dead,  _ irrelevant _ voice from ancient books, reminding her that she wasn't the first girl to find him lurking in her boudoir. Except that she was. He was not Angelus. And she was not those girls. And this was a first for them both.   


Still, when he reached for Mr Gordo, she swung her weapons bag over the sill and dropped it to the carpet with a  _ thump _ loud enough to startle him out of touching her pig. Unfairly reactionary, yes. But she'd had a bad day - which felt like the first of a bad week - and surely it wasn’t too much to ask that her sanctuary at the end of it remain undisturbed?   


Angel  _ had a bad feeling, _ so he said. Hence the lurkage. Any remaining warmth for his unexpected presence popped like a balloon, because  _ of course  _ he couldn't be here to  _ see  _ her, talk to her, perhaps even  _ cuddle  _ with her. No, like always it was vague portents of doom that could only boil down to more hard work for her. Alone.   


"Look," she snapped, "can it wait until tomorrow? Because tonight, not so much with the deal left." Angel's face took on a tight, irritated expression, making her wince inwardly. She was  _ never  _ going to get cuddles. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I'm just- Long day. School stuff. What's up?"   


Repeat:  _ bad feeling _ . Sad chocolate eyes and ominous tones.   


She shook her head, swallowing down another ire-laced sigh. "Okay. I guess I'll… keep an extra eye open." As though she didn’t have them all wide at all times all ready.   


"You'll have mine," Angel promised.   


Good. That was good. Some of the warmth fuzzled back. "Thanks." A stupidly yearning, sullen little girl's voice slipped out of her mouth to ask, "You could patrol with me tomorrow? Meet me here at dusk? Mom's out of town all weekend."   


Angel gave her that  _ look, _ the one that often made her feel small and naive, but tonight only deepened her stubborn, tantrumy mood.   


"Or not," she snapped, crossing back to the window and shoving it up in its frame. "But I'm not good company right now."

He ducked his head in a nod, uncomfortable with her like this, relieved at the out. Hell,  _ she  _ was uncomfortable with her like this. And with the vague, tenuous relationship they had. And with the twitchy, unsettled vibe under her skin that had been brewing quite well on its own before he'd poured the gasoline of his warning on it.   


"You get some rest," Angel told her gently, countenance smoothing out. "I'll be around."

"Thank you," she murmured, apologetic and grateful. "I promise I'll slay bitchy-Buffy."

Angel smiled a little, his eyes sympathetic and understanding. "Goodnight, Buffy," he said, and kissed her softly on the forehead before swinging out of the window.   


"Goodnight," she whispered after him sadly.

  
  
  


His love was cold.  _ Feeling _ cold, as no vampire should. Bouts of shivers swooped over her at decreasing intervals, setting her murmuring about frozen mammoth corpses in the permafrost and the warm-burning fat beneath their skin.  _ Would you tame me a mammoth, Spike? May I ride his furry back through the circus ring while juicy little children clap their hands? _ She was getting worse by the week now, whatever sorcery those bastards had imbued their little torture device with gaining strength as fast as she lost it. He massaged her rigid muscles in a steaming tub of ginger-spiced water, murmuring soothing platitudes while his mind sprinted in ever-quickening circles in its search for a real solution.   


The book - the book Dalton had sworn would contain the ritual they needed - read like gibberish so far. The biographical sections were clear enough, but as soon as it moved into the chapters of rituals all attempts at translation went to hell. Spike could (and did) threaten Dalton with the most painful consequences his twitchy brain could supply, but that was nowt but an outlet for his own frustration. The way Dalton's hands shook over the pages of his latest attempt every time Spike loomed in over his shoulder made it plain that he'd long since got the picture.   


Blinkered as he was by his growing desperation, it took Dru to see what he'd missed, plucking the answer daintily from the air and turning it over to him as idle pieces of candy. The key. The mausoleum where it would be found. Simple. Relief was invigorating, and the world full of promise again.   


And, apparently, of the damn slayer. It was like she had a compass tuned to whatever goings-on he most wanted her kept away from. Dalton made it back, with the key, thank fuck; the minion he'd sent as bodyguard did not. And even trembley little Dalton was now raising a voice in complaint about it.   


He should've taken her out long before now. Should've waited for her on patrol, thrown down his gauntlet and had himself a real good night. Should've broken the bitch's limbs and dragged her home to splay on a platter before Dru. Hell, could've - _could_ \- make an exception, pull a leaf from Darla's book and drop her with a hail of bullets, all cold-blooded efficiency and professionalism. Fuck knew there was too much riding on things here to fuck around fulfilling his own wants. Forget the fun- the fight he longed for. Focus on Dru. And no, forget any ideas about gunning the slayer down himself; she was too damn dangerous, sinister in the way he forgot himself in her presence, in the way she lit something addictive, electric, a live wire in his veins; too bright, too burning, too  _ Buffy. _ No, he was going to have to deal with this remotely.   


He called in the Tarakans. 

  
  
  


The first of the assassins came at her on the next night's patrol, relying on brute strength when he failed to take her by surprise. Brute strength which left her bruised and limping but didn't prevent her caving his head in on a handy-dandy tombstone. Angel roared out of the bushes just as it went  _ crunch-shleup, _ and she gave him a wry smile as he helped her to her feet.   


"Knew I had to be quick if I wanted him to myself."   


He checked her over, fussing, while she kept hold of the arm he'd extended to help her up, leaning into his stolid strength as her skyrocketed heartbeat calmed. She'd killed crazy-strong-hairy-dude. She could be excused for a moment of reliance on this comforting arm. It was a very nice arm.   


"Are you okay?" Angel asked, those soft-puppy eyes pouring chocolate syrup on her soul.   


"I am now," she answered, and it felt like her heartbeat was gaining volume rather than losing it.  _ Kiss me, _ it thumped, heedless of all its contortions of the last few weeks, tingling her lips with the message that if she could only meld them to his then all that extraneous mess would slide away.   


He looked down sharply, attention snagged, then shook her off to crouch quickly beside her slayee. The drumbeat in her lips stumbled in misstep before swooping sadly down into a whine in her stomach.  _ Back to my special reality of third-wheel corpses. _   


Angel glared hard at bruisy-guy's hand, then jerked a ring from one digit there with an icky snap of bone. He held it up to her with tight, clenched fingers. "You know what this means?" he asked, voice roughened with anxiety.

"I've won a prize?" she asked lightly. Whatever doom and gloom it symbolised wouldn't be made any easier by getting all bleak about it.   


"No," he growled, and wow, he was really serious now.   


She probably should be too, but the edge of authority in his tone only prickled up her spine in a way that made her want to toss it back in spite. Bad news was old hat. Whatever it was she would hunt it and kill it, and  _ then  _ maybe she'd get her Angel-kisses. Not that she wanted them now, mood all broken and vengeance for such building in her veins. " _ Spike _ ," she growled in reply, certain somehow that whatever latest was wrong, it was going to lead her straight back to him and his unerring knack for crashing in at the height of her personal problems and setting about making them worse.   


"Spike?" Angel asked, intense in a different way now. A cagey, suspicious way. "Have you seen him?"   


"Not since- the club." And Ford, and all the layers of deceits, and all the conversations she hadn't had since with Angel, postponed by mourning and lack of opportunity as they had been. "You were saying?" she asked resignedly.

"Order of Taraka. Assassins. Giles will know more." He began hurrying her towards the cemetery exit, one broad palm on the small of her back as he scanned the shadows around them. "You need to hide. I'll find out who's contracted them and put a stop to it."

She planted her feet and turned to face him, ire swooping back. "I'm the slayer. I don't do 'hide'. Especially not from losers like Stinky there," she cocked a thumb back towards the assassin's body.   


"He was only the first," Angel said, low and serious and maybe a little peeved himself now. "There'll be another, and another, and another, day and night, wherever you go. They specialise in concealment, disguise; they're 'the mailman carrying a rifle, the lamplighter with a chloroform rag'. Go  _ home _ , Buffy. Let me handle this."

She bit her teeth together, emotions swirling hotly. "Be careful?" she asked, conceding.   


He nodded quickly. "Call Giles. I'll be over tomorrow, as soon as the sun goes down."

She went, kicking offensive bits of gravel out of her way at each echo of  _ go home, Buffy, _ and studiously ignoring the urge to track Spike down herself and ask him just what the hell he was playing at by hiring  _ assassins.  _ Because yeah, it stung. So much for the assumed respect of their  _ private _ battle.  _ Stupid vampire. Being all… vampirey. _ Quite why she'd expected, well,  _ better _ from him, she didn't know. But she had. Stupid  _ Buffy,  _ more accurately.   


She was so looking forward to kicking his ass for it.

  
  
  


Dalton had done it. He could have bleeding kissed the bloke's ponce-snobby footwear in appreciation (he'd kissed Dru instead, a soft, tender drag of lips all the more enticing for the knowledge of how brutally,  _ healthfully  _ carnal she would soon be again). First, however…   


Spike clapped his hands together, snapping his crowd's focus even tighter, energising them for the task at hand. There was an element of showmanship necessary in keeping a rough and rag-tag group like this on-side and fixed on a single goal. Everyone loves a confident leader. A bit of flair, heap of swagger, word of brash charm delivered at the right moment. And he was joyously brimming over with it tonight. "Go," he told them. "Net me an Angel."  _ Fly, my pretties. _   


They did, jostling and eager, splitting into their respective teams and throwing cocky growls at their competition. It didn't matter that the only tangible prize on offer was not being dusted. It didn't matter that Angel was like to take out much of whichever team found him first. What mattered was that they might win, drag their quarry home to the master's feet and thus find themselves elevated above the rabble in his eyes.   


Spike grinned after them. _Idiots_. 

  
  


The winners were back in record time (well, two out of four were), bloodied and bruised but triumphantly swinging a half-conscious Angel by his bound arms and legs. Spike roped him to the end bedpost to let Drusilla have her fun, watching as she scampered her fingers spider-like across the bastard's face, fishing for minnows in the dim dead pool of his brain. By sunrise she'd settled into reading to him, again with that mutilated scrapbook of a tomb she'd patchworked together. The core of the thing had emerged from the few fairy-tale pages left after her little book-burning display; the rest was a hodgepodge of newspaper trimmings, advertisements that had caught her eye, and the volumes of magic and ritual Dalton had discarded earlier on in this mission. There'd be a line about The Rabbit Bride, then  _ 'Come To Sunnydale Mall' _ , then instructions for properly removing the scales from a bat's wing. Nonsense, but it kept her happy. And it was certainly doing a number on Angel, his ugly mug contorting in all sorts of amusingly strained ways as he tried to follow the narrative well enough to answer her next question. Get it wrong, and she was like to write it in his skin.

"Cheer up, old boy," Spike told him, clapping him on the shoulder. "Another… sixteen hours, or so, and it'll all be over for you. Till then,  _ try _ to concentrate when the lady speaks." With a final hard pinch to Angel's skin, he moved around him to stretch out on his back on the bed, watching Dru read her story and ready to cuff Angel's head with a boot heel if required. Or, you know, when he next felt like it. 

  
  
  


After a fitful, restless night with one ear constantly on alert for danger, Buffy called Giles for an update on his research-athon. One night cowering under the sheets had to be her limit, because she could remember doing patrol/kidnap/fighting all-nighters that had left her brighter the next morning than she felt right now.   


Thankfully, Giles had news. (Less thankfully, he was also still all dire-warnings-guy about the Tarakans. But hey.) Big ritual, restore a sickly vampire to full fangy strength, needed a new moon - which just happened to be available tonight - and some kind of sanctified place. Everything clicked together.  _ Drusilla.  _ The trembling wraith with her tubercular-heroine chic. Assassins, who had already kept her tucked up at home for one night and promised to hinder any efforts she made today to prevent said ritual.  _ Spike. _ A grim flash of satisfaction as her instincts were vindicated and his motivations became clear. Oh, and the last piece needed for the ritual? The sickly vamp's sire.  _ Angel. _   


It was time to end this.   


"I'll warn Angel," she told Giles.  _ And he can take his turn hiding under the bed. _ Those instincts snarled in validation again; she was the slayer, dammit, and  _ she  _ would march proudly up to this final showdown and fight for what was hers. "You work on where this ritual's going to be."

  
  
  


Angel's basement apartment was empty of vampires. And occupied by one stealthy hot-chick-with-superpowers, who nearly caught Buffy with a high kick to the chin as she entered. Assassins who stole one's schtick and acted it back with ramrod sobriety? Totally unfair.   


They fought to a heated pause of reassessment; the way the girl parried, anticipated, moved with something previously unseen but somehow familiar and therefore predictable… it was kinda unsettling, and the opinion seemed mutual. When Buffy’s demand for an explanation was met with a claim that her opponent was  _ de vampire slayer,  _ it made no sense and it also made perfect sense. She called a ceasefire and dragged - alright, led under guard - the girl to her watcher. 

  
  
  


Her angel burned so prettily, writhing and moaning beneath her as she seared the map in through his skin. It was imperative that he carry a copy, lines for her to read when her own drifted off on her as they were wont to do. Imperative also that it not be a  _ duplicate _ , like one of those new mimeographs; he would leave soon to arrive later, and so the directions must adapt to his quarter. She had seen the signs and signals in the gyrations of his soul, and so she baited her trails with the guilt and little switches it liked to feed upon.   


"Spare the rod and spoil…" she murmured, trailing off as the dream slithered away again. There'd been something there, a spinning eel passing her line, some other tale on the horizon. But Spike had cocked it up somewhere, cockled the pages, cuckolded the future when he came home with his tongue whetted for the fire, and it had swum and faded. No matter. Spike was still a good dog, and this bad one would bend to be yoked to its debt.

"Say  _ uncle _ ," she told the bad one, a little frisson of anticipation curling around her teeth. She did so love it when he came to play. "Oh, that's right. You  _ killed _ my uncle." The barbs dug at his skin, and she tilted the bottle of holy water to help wash them inside of it.

"That’s it then," Spike said, entering with impatience under his feet. "Off to church."

_ Church _ loomed black with shadow in her mind's eye, events obscured and steps unknown. She would have liked the other boy to have been here as added accompaniment, but Spike had forbidden her such, tangled up as he was. Twisted and tangled into these knots that made him tetchy and quick-tempered; hung his sense of inadequacy dangling as overripe fruit for Angelus to bruise, which he did. She let Spike snarl, and then she shushed him, soothing, reminding;  _ Spike, the moon is rising. It's time.  _ It would not do to have the story changed on her again. Then she smoothed Miss Edith's skirt, and set off for church. 

  
  
  


There were delays with another surprise assassin; there were delays while Giles made calls and established facts (the girl - Kendra, no last name - was indeed the newest slayer, official bearer of the mantle, she who had inherited when Buffy maybe-just-briefly… well, okay, died). There were delays because Sunnydale apparently possessed more than forty-three churches, and narrowing down the list to pinpoint this ritual was going to take as long as it took.

Buffy drummed her fingers on the crossbow she'd just checked and readied, conscious of the waning day and approaching moon and  _ Angel, out there somewhere… _ Spike had him; she felt it in her bones.  _ And won't kill him before the ritual,  _ she kept reminding herself, though without much effect. God, she'd been so awful to him lately. Bitchy. Demanding too much from him, too fast, when she knew he was worried about getting carried away. She just felt so short of time, so aware of just how easily she might wind up dead for good. Or either of them. Without ever having known what it was like to give in, let go,  _ get _ carried away together. Find out what  _ it _ was like. Maybe it was selfish, stupid, but she didn't want to die a virgin. Not again. Didn’t want to never know what it was like to wake up next to someone you loved, naked skin touching naked skin; to smile and blush and kiss them good morning and nestle contentedly back into their shoulder.   


And… she'd also been suspicious. Unfairly so. Stupid Spike and his upending everything, and his stupid words, tainting the romance of what she did get from Angel, staining everything. And screw his stupid undead immortal love affair and it meaning more to him than a clean shot at her special gourmet blood and organs. Or whatever it was they all slavered for.   


Well, she was damn well going to show him. And get Angel back. And prove once and to all that she could take down  _ anything _ that got in the way of her happily ever after. "Giles," she announced, hearing the focused conviction in her voice, "Kendra and I are going to beat for clues. Everyone else, keep on that list." 

  
  
  


She  _ almost  _ let Spike go. She had Angel back, undusty, at her feet. Her friends were all still on theirs. Her blood was singing again, raging in symphony with the growing flames, energised in the way only this could bring; wanting to roar in victory, in having faced her equal opponent and come out on top, the prize and her life assured for another night. And he was retreating, fleeing as he should before her.   


That wasn’t enough. Some hot, living, bestial part of her still hungered for the kill; told her to go after him now, to run him down and sink her weapon deep into his back. It was fierce and primal and all kinds of frightening, and she mentally backpedalled so damn fast that she would have fled in the opposite direction from her beaten prey and all it represented.   


Except. Logic-brain kicked into gear with a screech of  _ what are you doing?! _ Duty and sacred calling and, oh yeah, she was  _ supposed  _ to kill vampires. Before they came back and  _ did _ hurt her friends. So she picked up a heavy censer from the altar, swung it on its chain, and let it fly at the back of his head. 

  
  
  


The church was black with charcoal, obscured with drifting ashes. Drusilla smiled to herself, amused at the games her mind could play, at having read some worrying cabalistic meaning into words she now saw were literal portents. Spike was rather ashy too, sooty pastel greys dusted across his beautiful cheeks, a tainted ashtray of icing sugar. She brushed a finger over the lashes of one of his eyes, then brought it to her mouth to taste, tongue fizzing delightfully with the caustic lye of him. Then she rose to her feet and pulled him free of the rubble, for she felt ready now, and there was much to do.


	3. Surprise

For an undefinable period of time, everything hurt. Everything except for the parts that felt nothing, which was far more worrying. Or would have been, had there been any room in his head beside the excruciating pain to  _ do _ any worrying. Consciousness insisted on existing, cruel bitch, giving him endless day after endless day of staring up at the crocheted bed hangings and wondering when Dru would finally pronounce him well enough to get drunk. His sadistic goddess fairly bathed in his agony, tongue flicking at her lips like a hungry snake, eyes fulling into deep, dark pools of lust as she peered down inside his pained ones and ate up the feelings there. She always had, but it was hard to enjoy her pleasure in it when  _ everything just hurt so goddamn much. _ Would have begged her for mercy, blood, a cool cloth, a bottle of painkillers with a chaser of whiskey, had he thought it would do any good. But he'd been hurt enough times over the years to know that asking for such was the surest way of enticing her to hold out. Better to grit his teeth, count the loops in the crochet, and wait for the worst to pass, as it inevitably would. And not think about his legs.

Besides. Dru was strong. Wonderfully, gloriously strong again; raven-sleek and feline-sinuous and ready to paint the town red with her claws. So it was all worth it.   


Christ, he hoped she wouldn't take off and leave him here.   
  
  
  


Buffy straightened the corners of the brown paper bag she carried, then knocked softly on Angel's door. He opened it with the same subdued softness, accepting the bag of blood with his usual deferential embarrassment and half hiding it beside his leg as he waved an invitation to come in. He was doing better, the last few days, finally regaining the last of the strength he'd lost to the ritual, but she was determined to make sure he was  _ all _ the way better before he had to think about going anywhere. Hence, daily blood-delivery-Buffy.   


"Hey," she murmured, stepping in close to gaze up into his eyes. "How are you feeling?"  _ They _ were also doing better, her new determination to love him and give him what he needed from her (and wrestle her selfish, bitchy thoughts under control) leading to tender kisses and the sense that maybe she was getting it right at last. If they could just stay here a while, in this pocket dimension of muted lighting and no external influences, then their coupleness would grow strong enough to stand up to the world too.   


He smiled, just a little; a smile tinged with that aura of inner pain that always hung close by him, and which she worried was haunting him more heavily during the quiet, lonely recuperation. Between evil-robot-dating-mom and bought-a-cursed-shawl-mom and (even worse) extra-attentive-mom, she hadn't been able to spend as much time playing nursemaid as she would have liked. Plus there was patrolling, and training, and her other friends, and that whole thing with the butterflies, which all added up to the thought crossing her mind occasionally that despite how empty Kendra's life had sounded, she probably got a whole lot more beauty sleep than Buffy did. And… Kendra had gone home full of satisfaction with the trip and ready to get stuck back into her beloved books. Buffy… well, she supposed she was satisfied. She  _ had  _ won. Only… she sorta wished she had one more proper punch-up with Spike to look forward to, stake to fangs and lives on the line. Try though she had, books just didn't have the same tension-releasing effect on her, and the lingering sense of incompletion he'd left her with refused to go away.

"Better now," Angel whispered back. "How are  _ you?" _   


"Better now," she echoed, blinking up at him. Everything was. 

  
  
  


In a sudden turn of kindness, Drusilla brought him home a wheelchair. He closed his eyes to it, hurt and hurting and resigned to lying right where he bloody well was until either he could walk again or some benevolent sod came along and staked him.   


Dru pouted, whined, whimpered her own hurt feelings; he felt like even more of useless, thankless arsehole at for it, and summoned the monumental effort required to drag himself into sitting on the damn thing. And suddenly… things looked brighter. Teeth bared against reignited pains, he pulled her onto his lap to spin in shrieking circles and loops of the factory floor until she fell off laughing to gambol like a kitten at his dead feet. Yeah. Things would come right. 

  
  
  


"No Gorches here," Buffy proclaimed, tossing a hasty glance around the dark cemetery. "More smoochies now."

Angel smiled -  _ actually  _ smiled - and obliged. It felt like they'd turned a corner; like she'd proven something at last and been judged ready to get her affection on. He was all long, lingering kisses and hands that settled softly on her hips, and she was shyly experimenting with placing hers on his chest and on those strong, manly arms.

The fuzzy image of possible further explorations crept ever closer, and her demure uncertainty about quite how to (or whether she wanted to) advance things to the next level seemed only to encourage him, to her relief. Her relative inexperience was embarrassing, but Angel seemed like he might now be pleased to take the lead for her as soon as she stopped freezing up and backing away. Maybe she was wrong to love him, but who was the world (and one biased vampire) to say so? People could change, and he carried so much on those broad shoulders.   


A stick snapped somewhere off in the bushes, and she broke the kiss reluctantly to turn towards the sound. The unexpected boon of Angel offering to come along on patrol tonight was a heady distraction, but she'd better not entirely forget why she was out here at all. 

  
  
  


Dru was up to something. No, nothing so ordinary as that. Dru was plotting and planning, scheming and manoeuvring, drawing together the threads of some private design and spinning them into her web with a rarity of focus and determination. And she wouldn't tell him what it was. Likely it was nothing, some odd little fancy that had caught her idle eye, like that time she'd conspired to turn demonic bulls on the matadors in Spain. But. Something in the cold absorption of her eyes, something in the way she smiled to herself as she told him again,  _ hush, you must not spoil the surprise,  _ something in the way she shoved broken girls and mind-numbing painkillers into his lap and told him to leave her be… well, it was unnerving him. He drank the girls, and he went easy on the pills, and he watched her with narrowed eyes, trying to ignore the chill that mixed in with the spasming nerves in his spine.   


And then she asked for a birthday present. He'd had thoughts in that direction, had sent out enquiries, in fact, for if there was one thing sure to please Dru and turn her attentions to something safer, it was a party. But one day she smoothed a hand over his hair, told him the blue man would be a terrible guest and thus was not to be invited, and that instead he must find her a mirror. So that she could see herself in her party dress.   


"Pet," he said cautiously, "I don't think they make mirrors like that."

In answer she only gave him that sly, sinister smile again, and ruffled up his hair.   


Right. Find a special mirror, then. He hunted up Dalton and put the challenge to him, swearing that of course the thing did indeed exist, wanker, and that there'd be a reward to stagger the imagination if he could find or make or otherwise get one here within the week. And that Drusilla would be  _ most _ upset if he failed her. No one wanted his wicked princess upset with them. She had that disturbing habit of thralling people into taking flamey mid-morning walks if they displeased her at the wrong moment.   


Back up plan:  _ paint _ Dru's reflection onto a looking-glass. He summoned a couple more of their remaining minions and ordered them to bring him a portrait artist. Alive, please.

  
  
  


Buffy was grounded. No going out after school, no late phone calls,  _ do not leave your room unless you're going to school, young missy. _ It meant waiting until at least midnight before she could slip out to patrol, and if the heartbroken families of any new Sunnydale murder victims had an issue with that then they could take it up with her mother, because Buffy was too tired to care.  _ This is what I get for saving the day again.  _ At least Angel was being patient about it. And had sufficient stealth to perch at her window after sundown, where they recreated the brief highlights of a certain play without her mother being any the wiser.   


"I give it a week," she told Willow and Xander over lunch. "Tops. She'll remember how much she hates taxiing me around, and monitoring the phone, and that there's that late-night festival film showing she wanted to see, and I'll be paroled with a stern warning."

"Do you think you'll ever be able to tell her?" Willow asked shyly. "About being the slayer?"

"Yeah, I mean, Miss Calendar got over it pretty quick," Xander put in.

"Miss Calendar's not my mom," she said dryly.  _ And doesn't seem like the sort of person to pack someone off to the nuthouse without hearing them out. _   


"I guess it would be scary," Willow said thoughtfully. "Finding out that your daughter has to go out and fight vampires every night, and that she's not allowed to quit, and that no sternly written letter to the mayor is ever going to change it."

"Plus, no dental plan. She'd probably try to ground me until adulthood." Or something. "Anyway, what'd I miss at the Bronze last night?"

  
  
  


"Huh," Spike said with an amused snort. "Thought it was a fool's errand."   


Dalton, standing beside the large mirror in the factory's loading bay, gave a nervous chuckle. "I-it may be the only one in existence. The museum here had it on loan from Europe, for the 'Curiosities of Glass History' exhibit."

"Good old hellmouth," Spike murmured absently, tilting his head slightly as he considered the thing. It looked like any other mirror. Large, sure - head-height and a metre wide - and the frame around its border showed possible hints of magical symbolism in its carvings, all twisting vines and flowing water, but that was nothing unusual. The glass was just that, glass, its back side silver-coated under a layer of black paint. No, the only thing that really stood out about the mirror, was that  _ he could see himself in it. _ Couldn't decide if it was fascinating or disturbing. Both, he supposed, and throw in a dollop of disconcertment. Irrationally, felt like the thing might poison him with some reflection of a soul if he looked too closely, because wasn’t that how the whole mirror-thing worked? Had the morose forehead gained a reflection along with that soul they shoved up his arse? Spike shook his head, dispelling the mood.   


"Good work," he told Dalton firmly. "I'll sort something out for you." Leaving him to gift wrap the mirror and stow it out of sight, Spike went to tell their kidnapped artist the lucky news that while they wouldn't be requiring his painting services after all, he could still serve for a meal. He did seem quite an agreeable chap though. Perhaps he ought to have someone turn him, replenish the ranks a little. Dru was burning through them like kindling lately. 

  
  
  


Buffy rose from her bed in the pre-dawn light with a casual fluidity that hinted at dreaming; somehow, whether she was or not didn't seem important. Opening her wardrobe, she found a pool of water covering the floor, and stepped slowly down into and then through it, liquid parting like shimmering curtains for her.   


Metal stairs led her to a concrete floor strewn with fresh red rose petals, their soft velvet crushing silently under her bare feet. She stood in some kind of large, industrial room, dimly lit and empty but for a huge free-standing mirror at one end. Her feet drifted across the open space through a steadily warming wet mush of flowers, while gentle music began to play somewhere above, violins or something.   


The mirror, when she stopped before it, showed her an image of herself, with more of the red petals adorning a wreath which wound through her high-piled hair. She checked with her hand, mirror-Buffy doing the same;  _ yep, we have a match. _ Behind reflection-Buffy something moved, a dark, quick-lumbering form in the shadows, and she whirled in place, searching the room behind her and feeling the folds of her dress for a weapon.   


“Don’t worry,” Drusilla said, moving up to her side. “It can’t get out of there.”

Buffy’s eyes followed Drusilla’s pointing finger back to the mirror, where she saw Angel standing behind mirror-her with his chin resting on her shoulder. He definitely was not standing there here in non-mirror land. "That’s not how it works," she told Drusilla, frowning.   


"Isn't it?" Drusilla asked dreamily. Lifting the hem of her dress, she stepped over the edge of the frame and into the reflection. "Thank you for the gift," she said politely, and her fingers darted like striking snakes to pluck mirror-Buffy's floral crown from her head. "Happy birthday, little Sól," she said, smiling, then began licking up the petals with a long tongue.   


Alone in the non-reflection room, Buffy reached for the mirror's surface and Angel's arm, lonely fear blossoming inside her. Her hands met glass made slick with something thick and sticky, the mirror turning black and empty under it. She turned her palms over to study just as the last melting petals from her stolen crown began to run into her eyes, and said quietly, "But of course."

  
  
  


_ Drusilla’s back.  _ Clear, simple fact in her mind's eye on waking.  _ Thank you, dream-powers. _ Perhaps they were learning, abandoning the symbolism that had always seemed like a stupid waste of time. Or maybe not, with the whole blood-crown and flowers thing, whatever that was all about. Anyway, the important stuff was clear. Drusilla might be less dusty than she had hoped, and Angel was in danger from her.   


She jumped out of bed (almost falling on her face when a twist of sheet tried to hang onto her ankle) and dressed quickly. With the easing of her 'lifetime' curfew this week, she could walk over to Angel's before school, reassure herself that he was okay, and tell him to lie low while she went to Giles.   


It wasn’t until she found her mom waiting downstairs that she remembered it was her birthday. 

  
  
  


"What did you say the mirror's frame looked like?" Willow asked from her spot on the library stairs.   


Whether they were launching into the research with this rare gusto because they'd understood the seriousness of her dream-warning, or whether they were just being kind because it was her birthday, Buffy was feeling grateful for both it and them right now. Kendra's situation was just wrong, and they would have to do something about it. "It was carved with all these, I don't know, like, leaves and stuff," she replied, trying to recall the rapidly fading details she hadn't been focused on at the time. "And water, maybe, or I guess it could have been blood. Ripply patterns. Wooden, about yay-wide," she held out her spread fingers.   


"Like this?" Willow asked, turning her laptop around.   


"Yes…" Buffy said slowly, crossing to her and squatting in front of the screen.  _ "Exactly  _ like that."   


Willow spun the laptop back and began reading aloud with only partially-repressed pride, while Giles and Xander put down their books to listen. "It's known as 'The Zauberspiegel', and thought to have been custom made in Venice around 1800, though the method used has never been verified. The frame, depicting ivy vines and running water, is carved from oak. And it was stolen from Sunnydale Museum three nights ago." She smiled up at them.

"Magic mirror," Giles murmured.   


"Does it tell us what it does?" Buffy asked.   


Willow shook her head. "Only that it's an important historical piece, police are appealing for clues… Oh, here's something, 'the mirror was originally commissioned by one Lord Winter, a collector of fairy-tale and occult oddities'."

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall…" Xander offered.   


"Who's the fairest of them all," she murmured, then lifted her eyebrows at Giles expectantly.   


"Oh, ah…" He fiddled with the book he'd been reading. "There are beliefs, of course, that mirrors have the ability to steal a person's soul, trap it inside themselves. The folklore surrounding the bad luck wrought by breaking one is based on the same premise; break a mirror, and damage the reflection of your shadow-soul inside it. If this mirror does indeed have some magic ability which Drusilla is able to access, I should be very cautious of coming within sight of it."

"She's going to try to take Angel's," Buffy said. "He was trapped inside it with her in my dream."

"And to that a virulent no thank you," Xander said. "I think I've still got a crick in my neck from our little Angelus bluff act. I vote not keen on meeting the real deal." He raised his hand.   


"Buffy-" Giles started in the gentle-yet-firm tone reserved for hard truths.   


"I know," she said quietly, before hardening her voice. "I know, Giles. Bad news of the legendary kind."  _ Girls seduced to be raped and tortured, mangled and maimed until they begged for death. Whole towns poisoned, corrupted, reduced to ashes and salted earth. _ "So how do I destroy this mirror?"

"We don't know for certain that this is her intent," Giles cautioned, or maybe he was attempting to reassure her. "There are many more legends attached to mirrors, to reflections. Or that Drusilla is indeed still extant."

"Oh she's out there alright," Buffy said. Out there, and planning to ruin her birthday.   


"Be that as it may," he said, without conceding, "I suggest we tread cautiously. I'll attempt to discover more about this  _ Zauberspiegel,  _ and how we can safely shut it down if it becomes active. I presume you have given Angel some warning? In any case he must be kept away from this thing until we know more, at all costs."

She nodded. "I'll head back over there now and update him. And see if he's got any ideas about where Drusilla might be."   
  
  
  
  


Dru clapped her hands, squeaking with excitement. "It's  _ perfect, _ " she told Spike, eyes on him in the mirror. "You  _ are _ a good boy." She giggled, high-pitched and airy, then spun in a circle to watch her skirts flare out in the looking-glass.   


"Glad you approve," he murmured fondly, ignoring the reflection again to watch her dance in reality. "Happy birthday, luv."   


"The happiest," she said seriously, coming to a stop. " _ Do _ try to keep up." Pulling out the dismembered pocket watch she'd taken to carrying, she checked its motionless face carefully before snapping it shut and dropping it back into her pocket. "Rosemary!" she called.

One of her new recruits stepped forward; a great, hulking thug of a man who looked like he could have been a bodyguard or the bouncer at a biker bar in his recently departed life. "Yes, ma'am?" he asked respectfully, without a flicker of disagreement for the name she'd dubbed him with. She'd done well with her selections, these newbies lending some much-needed muscle power and all possessed of a certain moronically blind obedience, but it made him uneasy that she'd gathered them at all; everything about this unusual burst of sustained focus was setting off warning sirens.

"My guests will be arriving soon," Dru told Rosemary. "Close the curtains. Then you must wait behind the door to take their coats. Lavender, Poppy, Daisy…" she trailed off with a sad little pout, eyes fogging over as the names she'd chosen eluded her.

"You, you half-wits," Spike growled at the other three, and they stepped forward quickly to stand beside their comrades.   


Dru blinked a couple of times, then focused back in on them. "The door," she hissed, pinching her fingers at them in angry little snapping motions. "Hide!"

He waited until they'd all filed out, then rolled up to Dru and tugged her down onto his lap. "Who," he whispered into her ear, controlling his voice down to a soft, teasing lilt, "are we expecting?"

She giggled prettily, sliding her claws across his face to press a finger to his lips. "Shh. It's a  _ surprise  _ party."

Rolling his eyes, he sucked her finger into his mouth and bit it gently. Well, hopefully it would be fun.

  
  
  


Buffy walked the footpath on the town side of the warehouse district, trying to reach out with her spidey-senses through the rumble of early-evening traffic and the heavy smell of plastic from the recycling plant. She was getting nothing, and the watcherey voice in her head admonishing her for refusing to practice using said senses often enough wasn't helping her mood any. She had maybe half an hour left before she had to be home to check in with mom for dinner, and if she could just narrow down the location of Drusilla’s hidey-hole then at least she'd have something to add to the table when they regrouped at Giles's tonight. Sitting around doing nothing while someone plotted against her boyfriend was so not her style.

Abandoning the attempt to feel for vampires, she stopped in place and prodded at her brain encouragingly. The plastic scent around here was kinda icky, feeling like it would burn out her nostrils if she stuck around too long… Scent. Right. There weren't, so far as she knew, any factories in Sunnydale specialising in the particular dusty-rose scent that had clung to Dru. She began walking again, away from the plastic place, searching the map in her memory for anything useful.  _ Meat processors?  _ There was that grungy place a few blocks off, surrounded by more of the empty buildings that were so common in Sunnydale; nothing around there smelt of anything much besides the weak hint of blood, and it would only help with disguise. Lacking better ideas, she headed that way.

  
  
  


A noise sounded at the rear of the building; the scuff of a foot, a short gasp. Dru pushed off him to rise to her feet, eyes gleaming in anticipatory glee. Outside, a peppy quip cut off with a series of smacks on flesh, then a final dull  _ thud  _ of heavy impact, and he turned to Dru in horror.   


"Tell me," he growled, "that's not the bleeding  _ slayer?" _ Dru ignored him entirely, eyes on the distant door, and he rounded on her angrily and with a sudden surge of venomous rage for his current condition. "Are you out of your  _ fucking mind? _ Don't know if you bloody noticed, ducks, but that girl is more damn trouble than she's worth-"

" _ Be quiet," _ Dru hissed, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and shaking him like a rat before shoving him back in his chair. "It's  _ my _ party and I shall invite whom I please."   


He subsided, teeth gritted against the pain and the indignity of being manhandled and hurt so effortlessly. Bloody bitch of a slayer, that was all her fault too.   


Dru's minions - now reduced to five in number, apparently - came sloping back in, the limp form of the slayer herself dangling over the shoulder of the tallest. Spike watched in silence as she was dumped in front of Dru, telling himself he should be over the moon to see her so soundly put down. Should be congratulating Dru for however she'd managed to wrangle it exactly, should be bloody looking forward to sharing in the girl and finding out if her blood had the healing qualities it was rumoured to… Mostly, however, he just felt very, very worried.   


Dru had her minions bind the girl's hands and feet, then she promptly left her in the middle of the floor to return to her dancing, seemingly dismissing the slayer's presence from her attention entirely.   


"She won't  _ stay _ down," Spike said in warning, eyes constantly scanning the puddle of slayer for any sign that she'd moved from unconsciousness into playing possum. A rapidly-swelling lump on her head was oozing blood into her hair, oily black on living gold in the candlelight, something accusing about it. Perhaps she  _ would  _ stay down, forgotten and ignored on the cold concrete while that stain spread damningly, and he refused to delve into how he felt about that. "Best get on with the killing bit, pet."

"You mustn't touch," Dru sang, still dancing in slow, drifting motions to the music only she heard. "The creature is poison. Poisoned bait to catch strayed dogs."

_ Oh, bleeding hell. _ He grimaced, tongue full of distaste for the scene and the theatrics and the bitterness of knowing that he should have guessed as much, should have seen this coming back when he'd first heard that she'd met up with the wanker. "He'll kill you for it," he said coldly, and judged it safe enough to take his eyes off the very lax form of the slayer to fix them intently on Dru instead, searching the closed doors of her for any way to make himself heard. "Might have been all anodyne soulful regret on his lonesome, but you get between him and this girl and  _ he will bloody dust you without a second glance. _ " He caught her by one wrist, forcing her to stop in place, feeling thin porcelain bones grate together under his palm. "You do remember Darla, old bent bitch, closest thing that sadistic fucker came to loving? She tried her spot of this and look where it bloody got her!" The roar was unintentional and pointless, and he schooled his voice down to something low and icy and cruel, filling it all malevolence he'd have liked to send Angelus's way, "And he will  _ never  _ give two shits about you compared to what he had with her."   


Dru only twisted around her arm, uncowed and content to let it break if it must for her to continue her broken dance. He held it in place as long as he could bear, wishing he could snap it gleefully and laugh in her face, knowing he would never bloody be able to, bruises blossoming though they might. Then he let her go, as she must have known he would, and slumped down uncomfortably in his chair.  _ Fuck. _ There was no way this was going to end well for them. 

  
  
  


" _ Slayer," _ someone whispered, barely loud enough for her to hear over the pounding in her head.   


Buffy tried to blink, squinted, tried again, and managed to slit her eyes open. Everything was upside down. Another few blinks and things resolved themselves to being closer to sideways, and the angle of her head to the ground being the cause of such. Spike was watching her from a few yards away. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and found him stubbornly still there. Not imagination, then. He looked anxious, face tight and eyes strangely wide and blue on hers.   


" _ You okay?" _ he whispered, almost sounding concerned.   


She turned the question over and decided that no, she really was not. Her arms felt like they were bound behind her back, and she thought her legs might be similarly tied. Also, she was lying on a factory floor, the last thing she remembered was looking for Drusilla’s factory hideout, and it felt like someone had tried to cave her skull in.   


Before she could tell him so (and maybe demand to be released), Spike's eyes jumped away to focus on something behind her and he mouthed a quiet,  _ shh. _   


She froze automatically, then belatedly wondered why she was listening to Spike, of all people. Blame it on the concussion.   


Muted footsteps slid and scuffed across the floor somewhere behind her, nearing, nearing, and then, finally, retreating again, and the entire time she fought the urge to roll over and do what she could to defend herself, glaring daggers at Spike in case he was screwing her over with this act.

Spike ever-so-slightly relaxed again, splitting his glances between her and whatever had just retreated from her back. He didn't try to speak to her again, and eventually she remembered that he'd asked a question.   


"Why?" she whispered suspiciously.

"Need to parley with you," he murmured quietly.   


"Why?" she asked again.   


Hot frustration flickered over his features for a moment, then he seemed to jerk it under, answering in short, clipped words, "Angel's on his way. Dru has plans for keeping him. Think it's in both of our best interests to make sure that doesn't happen. Capisce?"

_ Angel's-coming-here  _ and  _ Dru-wants-to-steal-his-soul  _ and  _ Dru-wants-Angelus _ and  _ oh-god-I'm-the-bait _ went ricocheting around. "Okay enough to kick your ass," she promised in a whisper.   


Spike’s eyes darkened with some unexpected anger, and he stopped looking at her.

She studied him more fully, then announced, "You're in a wheelchair."

"No shit," he said coldly.   


She swallowed, putting it together with the half-healed burns gracing one of his cheeks and the memory of a falling organ, and dropped her stare away in a small flush of guilt-laced embarrassment. She was supposed to be the vampire  _ slayer,  _ not the vampire maimer.   


"What are you offering?" she whispered.   


"I let you go," he whispered back, each word tight and low, "and you go grab your lug of a boyfriend and hang onto him somewhere that's not here. Dru and I get gone by week's end; you and I never so much as  _ hear _ about each other again."

She pressed her lips together, angry at herself for having walked right into this trap; seething at the knowledge that she probably did need Spike's help for the best outcome in it.

"No harm, no foul," he added, urging for an answer.   


_ No harm? Head begs to differ.  _ "Alright," she ground out. "Deal."

His smile was instant and unexpectedly honest, transforming his whole face before he wrestled it down into sobriety again. "Knew you had a brain in you," he murmured. "Roll over. But slowly. Keep playing sleepy."

"Taking a lot on faith here," she hissed, aiming the most lethal glare she could muster at him; 'turn your back to your mortal enemy' didn't sound much like 'I'll let you go'. Then she flexed her muscles, subtly feeling them out, closed her eyes, and rolled over with as much floppy sleepiness as she could fake.   


A moment later something cold and metallic dropped into her palm, and she closed her fingers on the hilt of a weapon instinctively.   


Her ears tracked the sound of rubbery wheels on concrete, taking a wide circle around her and away in the direction (Drusilla’s?) footsteps had gone. Opening her eyes in two narrow slits, she watched Spike approach his insane, scheming paramour, and wondered again at the intricacies of familial vampiric relations. Forget her no-questions-asked approach; as soon as this was over, she was going to hit Angel up for more explanation. But first: escape.   


She felt her way along the hilt and found a short, heavy, fixed blade attached to it. Turning it over in her hands, she began sawing at the ropes holding her wrists together, scanning the room for any sign of a mirror or the brutes that had jumped her.

  
  


Her freed hands were working on the last of the ropes around her legs when Drusilla suddenly batted Spike's hands away, rising from the side table setting where he'd been holding her attention with what looked like some kind of tea ceremony. Creepy-ho-vamp made a strange little excited clucking sound with her tongue, then slithered to the end of the room farthest from the doors, where heavy crimson drapes hung from window-rail to floor, contrasting darkly against her white linen dress. She never even glanced at Buffy, focused solely on the entrance, but Spike did, a fierce, urgent look that shouted,  _ hurry! _   


Buffy did, abandoning sneakiness to twist around and saw frantically with the now disgustingly blunt knife he'd provided. The door opened fast, flying back into the wall, and Angel charged in like a thoroughly fed up bull. His eyes took in Drusilla waiting expectantly, then landed on Buffy, and he strode towards her with grim, stormy eyes.

" _ Angel, run!" _ she shouted, kicking hard to tear her legs free faster and pushing up on her elbows. Bare seconds further and she'd be loose, ready to fight or flee. "It's a trap!"

He didn't listen. "I know," he growled, ducking down beside her. “But I won’t leave you here with them.”

The final rope fell free, and she pushed to stand herself up before having to grab hold of his arm and settle for sitting, the room swooping nauseatingly.   


"You're hurt," Angel said.   


She ground her teeth and tried with the words again, "I can run. Go!”

"Don't," said a high, throaty voice. "Boo!"   


Her stomach had already dropped into her toes before she twisted to look past Angel's shoulder, horribly certain of what she'd find.   


Drusilla stood next to the now opened curtains, the mirror from Buffy’s nightmare gleaming beside her with the reflections of every candle in the room. And Angel's.   


He stood up slowly, shoulders bowing under an invisible weight.   


"Do you like it?" Drusilla asked. She took a sliding step around to face Angel in the reflection, and - shudder - was reflected there too. "I feel I could touch my soul." She extended a hand, settling her fingertips feather-soft on the surface, then began to sing, her voice a wispy little warble and the words foreign.   


The mirror began to  _ glow,  _ outshining the candles with a lurid, purple-tinged radiance like several fluorescent tubes had been tucked inside it somewhere. And Drusilla’s fingers moved  _ through  _ it. Her reflection-self vanished as her hand waved about in mirror-land, only reappearing when she withdrew it.   


" _ Now  _ you can run," she said, turning back to them with eyes like chips of polished obsidian. "If you fancy."

Buffy looked up at Angel, and found his attention fixed not on Dru, but his reflection. "Angel?" she asked, hating how forlorn her voice sounded and that she wanted to tug on his pants leg like a child. It was only a mirror. Just a… weird mirror. They could fight this out.

He squared his shoulders as if preparing for some great battle, then looked down at her. "Wait for me," he said, his sad brown eyes imploring.

"Wha…?" she asked, trying to catch up with what seemed to be happening on some timescale too swift for her wobbly self to grasp. At least she had her feet under her now, holding a balanced crouch ready to stand up beside him or spring into action with a low leap.

She didn't get a chance to ask again. Angel bowed his head in a sort of sombre nod, then pressed her down with a hand on one shoulder as he told her earnestly, "I'll find my way home to you. You'll guide my heart every step of the way." Then he straightened up, locked his eyes on Drusilla, and ran at her in a flying tackle that tumbled them both into the mirror.   


The light flared up as they touched it, purple-white and absolutely blinding. A shrieking, tearing sound split the air, then everything fell silent.   


Buffy lowered the forearm she'd thrown over her eyes, blinking rapidly to try and clear the after-image of that light. The mirror stood silent, its reflection showing the same room in the factory, only now minus Angel and Drusilla. It was still glowing faintly, but fading and stilling with every blink. They'd gone  _ through _ it.  _ Shit.   
_

" _ Fuck, _ " spat a voice near the mirror, startling her; somewhere in her subconsciousness she'd smoothly categorised Spike as a neutral entity and neglected to keep track of what he was doing. He threw himself after Drusilla with far more willpower than grace, vampiric upper body strength making him a tumbling blur of black and white.   


The flash-and-scream of Spike crossing into mirrorland rocked her slightly on her feet as she made to follow, and she had to run blind for a few staggering steps before shapes began to resolve again in her vision.  _ Note to self, cover eyes. _ Two steps before the mirror she did so, squinting them shut in the crook of her elbow defensively and preparing to drop into a roll as soon as she breached the barrier. God knew what sort of landing was on the other side, but chances seemed high that it would resemble the effect of throwing four spitting cats into a barrel full of water.  _ Duck, roll, stay low…   
_

The two-inch piece of glass she would later watch Giles remove from that same elbow made her very thankful for her planning, useless for purpose as it turned out to be.   


Because the mirror  _ broke _ . Broke like any mirror would, broke with the unmistakable sound of shattering glass, broke at her impact to let her fall through it, the window behind it, and onto the cold, slimy asphalt outside in a shower of tinkling shards.   


It hurt. Grazing and bruising and slicing and the horrible plummeting sensation of realisation; she'd failed. The mirror- the  _ portal? Had to have been... _ had closed, with Angel inside it. Hell, forget  _ closed,  _ the thing was  _ gone, _ exploded into the million pieces now decorating the inside, outside, herself.   


For an unmeasurable time she simply lay there, some automatic bodily response to the whole evening's events kicking in to flatten her against the suddenly very comfortable ground.  _ Catalogue status. Numb the mental shock.   
_

Messages came filtering back from her body;  _ bleeding. Bruise here - do not use this limb. Intrusion here - remove. Will scream at you until you do. Bleeding.  _ She heaved a deep sigh that burnt its way right through all the achy places in that reassuring still-with-the-living way. Then she sat up and began picking bits of glass off herself. The damage was minor - inconvenient, but minor - and after double-checking the amount of blood leaking from a gash on her elbow, she began walking to the nearest payphone to phone Giles. He would know what to do.


	4. Another woods to not-grandma's

Orange leaves fell from the forest's trees, drifting lightly on their unnatural currents of air, taking their prescribed tour of the village before falling at last in a single vast mound beside the rutted dirt road on the outskirts. The road which led away, and didn't. There was nothing down it. Only emptiness and cinnamon dust, constellations that gave no guidance and an invisible one-eighty degree turn somewhere that ensured you always ended up right back where you'd started from.   


The air between leaf-currents was chilly tonight, nipping at his nose with a preview of the coming winter. Soon the snow would begin to fall, soft flakes that glittered under the moon's light, that gathered into marshmallow drifts on the stark black branches of the trees, that hid the icy ponds and streams. It was the second autumn he had watched wane in this place, form, situation; the coming freeze would mark two years since they had arrived.   


A redder leaf came swirling by, crimson-veined and scarlet-edged, and he snatched it from its peculiar trajectory to tear into tiny pieces with a growl. Imagine it was  _ her _ veins he tore; imagine he was crushing her brittle bones to jaggedly broken edges. She who hovered uninvited all over his thoughts tonight, conjured by the yellows and golds, by the teasing, tantalising dances of individual leaves. Stupid really. She was probably long gone, like last year's leaves; rotted and buried somewhere in the dank dark earth. He shuddered at that, at the images of hungry crawling insects seething in the dirt of fresh graves, at mortality and all its hideousness.

The fragments of his red leaf skipped away as they fell free, continuing their journey to the mildewing cemetery of their kind. They were slower now, whatever magic that animated them damaged by the tearing, yet still fixed upon their goal. He wondered idly what would happen if he swallowed them; whether the spell would lift his feet from the cold dirt to spin and frolic through the air, over the road, along past the sleeping houses. Best not. Things had a way of bearing unanticipated consequences here, and he did not fancy becoming a leaf, nor decaying in a multitude of them. He turned his feet to follow after them instead, drifting listlessly along the wobbly path they drew.

At the end-and-the-start of the road the red flecks fell like so many bits of dried leaf, not the moist, ruby droplets imagination had conjured in interim. Fell into the crackling heap of autumn colour, vanished into the muddy blur of it. Disappointment.   


He turned his nose to the empty plains beyond, to the star-dusted and blessedly moon-free sky, to the road that led nowhere and brought nothing.  _ Fucking slayer.  _ That she dared vanish into the earth while he was bidden not to forget her was a particularly nasty form of tyranny. His vengeful anger and his bitter hate, the night's mournfulness and melancholy, the coming cold and the leaving leaves; all of it merged into a single, lonely sound, and he opened his mouth to sigh it out plaintively to the uncaring sky.   


Afterwards he would turn to look over his shoulder, cast an almost-guilty glance back at the quietly snoring village, and find the moon risen behind him with all the pallid fullness of an unblinking, cataract-milked eye. And he would curl his lip at it in silent sneer, for what did it matter any more what the moon saw? It could hold no power over his lopsided discourse with tiny, distant suns.

  
  
  


They had found Giles's fancy-bowl-thing and were about to leave when she heard it; a distant, desolate sound, like a breath of wind had let out the faintest cry behind her ear. Buffy froze, listening hard, some deep-seated premonition raising the hairs on her arms.   


_ Silence… _   


Kendra lifted her eyebrows in query, gone equally still and silent and obviously wondering why.   


_...and more silence.   
_

A few more beats passed, then Buffy let her breath out in a huff, turning to look back behind them. "I heard something. Like… I don't know." Like a single vowel of raw, wordless  _ longing _ , but that didn't even make sense. "Take this." She handed the magical-bowl-of-whosit to her sister slayer and led the way back towards the depths of the museum.   


"We should-" Kendra bit her own words off with a sound that was part irritation, part confidential indulgence. She still liked to  _ act _ the part of good-slayer to Buffy’s frequent bouts of delinquency, but it was only a pretence, the story she would give when debriefing Zabuto on her activities this visit. Or, mostly. There was a distinct edge of real concern to some of her carefully chosen words lately; the sense that sooner or later she was going to pin Buffy down and attempt to find out what was really going on beneath her increasingly flippant surface.   


"We should  _ investigate  _ for potential clues," Buffy whispered, grinning. The night was young, yada yada, and given that she had yet to make up her mind on whether she was going back to her own boring dorm room tonight or dropping in at someone else's, and that she didn’t want to have to think about it yet, a slayerey side-mission could only be of the good.   


Storage Room One was all taxidermied critters, all glass-eyed and  _ could someone say 'bad idea on the hellmouth', please? _ Their last research party had hosted a lively debate over whether this all-too-familiar Sunnydale institute ought to be shut down for the sheer number of supernatural dangers it blithely shipped in, or whether it only acted as a convenient collation point for what would find its way here regardless.   


Stalking between the rows, Buffy traded gazes with a moth-eaten leopardess and wondered if it was her call she had heard, but the she-leopard's presence felt as inert as the table she stood upon. Door number two, then.   


The room was packed with furniture, carved and whorled, wooden, wrought iron, polished marble, but she knew what had drawn her the moment she stepped inside. It stood at the back, leaning against the wall in its little wooden frame; a mirror, maybe two feet across and a little more than that high. And, it was glowing.   


She took a step forward, then turned back to Kendra, who was already shaking her head.   


" _ Yes _ ," Buffy countered firmly. Two years, a lifetime, a soul-wrenching limbo of waiting and dreaming and searching fruitlessly; there was no goddamn way she was hesitating here. It was time to rescue Angel. "Tell Giles. Give me as much time as you can," she ordered quickly. Then she ran to the mirror, paused just enough to slow her momentum below glass-breaking levels, and pushed hands-first through it.

Blinding light, screeching noise.  _ Whoops. _ Should have remembered to anticipate that one, but too late now. Then, water.  _ Cold _ water, drenching her, surrounding her, almost pulling a gasp into her lungs before she blocked the impulse and clamped her lips shut tight. Her feet found a bottom, and she kicked off it fiercely, only for her head to breach the surface immediately.  _ Right. Can stand up. _ Unwilling to risk touching whatever might be down there any more than necessary, she opted to swim the few yards to the edge of the- pool? Pond? Tiny lake? that she'd landed in, then pulled herself out onto spongy ground.   


She took stock. The water was a small forest pool, weirdly straight-sided and deep for its size. The forest was thick and dark over it, but she could see some thinner patches a little way away, a hint of dappled moonlight falling on leaves. The air was cold, wet-cold, foggy and mist-forming with her breath; it would have been a shocking contrast to the dry climate control of the museum even without the unexpected dunking. It did taste better, however; sort of greenish, or fresh-airy, like people said jungles were. Buffy stood up, squeezed the water from her hair, and began walking towards the more open space, rueing her decision to wear thick denim jeans tonight. 

  
  


Her search eventually led to a path, all softly packed dirt and grass under her squelching shoes. The path, after a million disappointing bends and loops, finally opened out at the edge of a field. Warm light shone weakly from a small, bare-wood cottage across it, and after a moment's debate and another rub at the gooseflesh on her arms, she made her way towards it.

Buffy’s knock was answered by an old woman, hunched and creased with her years, hands trembling slightly as she lifted a candle to inspect the visitor on her doorstep.   


"Yes, dearie?" she asked, seemingly unsurprised to find a rather damp and presumably oddly-dressed young woman knocking on her door at midnight.   


"I-" For all the time she'd spent picturing the possibility of this journey, her imaginings had mostly focused on how she would storm triumphantly into some kind of dank dungeon and beat up the evil henchmen there before riding away with Angel behind her on a white horse. She probably should have given more thought to how she might  _ find _ the hidden dungeon, or anything else she might need in an unknown and friendless land. Oh well. If this woman took offence to her intrusion, perhaps she'd find herself with an armed escort to wherever it was they kept uninvited strangers. "I seem to have become lost," she said, with the warmest smile she could muster.   


"Aye," said the woman, deadpan. "And wet."

Buffy’s smile turned sheepish, and she glanced down at the muddy footprints her shoes were leaving on the wooden porch. "Yes. Do you think I could come in to get dry?" The warmth of the cottage was wafting out over her, a seductive lure of comfort and safety. Or a trap, but she'd deal with that if it arose. And hopefully not until after she'd got warm.   


"Aye," said the woman, and stepped back for her to enter.   


Buffy hesitated, second thoughts surging at the easy acquiescence and the element of disguise to the folds of the shawl about the woman's shoulders.

"Well don't make me stand here all night," the woman growled. "Get your behind in here if you're going to."

"Sorry," Buffy said quickly, and stepped inside. 

  
  
  


The scent hit Spike like a slap to the face, faint and changed and wildly out of place though it was.  _ Buffy.  _ He sniffed again, careful now, expecting - maybe wishing for - the touch of some new kind of magic, illusion, trickery. The scent was clean of them all. Chemical fragrances of shampoo and body lotions, washing powder and fabric softener, jarringly out of place here. Mud, crushed moss, spring water, roseberries. And the thing that had stopped him dead in his tracks, something that could only be  _ her; _ sugar and spice, ancient power and Californian sunshine, unnamable mysteries lacing unique and pheromone-laden sweat.   


Confronted with this shock assault, it took his brain long seconds to assimilate the fact of her presence here and begin suggesting responses. It'd been so damn long since he'd last imagined this possibility. Long since the fantasy had grown stale and sad, like everything else. What had he settled on, that last time? Skip joyfully that she'd finally arrived to chase up her errant beau, then tear her throat out? Couldn't remember. Didn’t matter anyway; that was dreaming. This was real. Scarily so.   


He took a deep breath, dusting off old facts, adding new ones. Two points seemed most immediately pertinent to his interests. One, that the slayer was like to be gunning for Dru. Two, that he had been seen to cry out to an empty sky on this very same eve, and Dru? Not one to wave off coincidences. So he would head back to the castle, to guard his queen. And once there, he would remain out of sight, to guard himself. Whether to support the slayer's bid or destroy her… he could decide that later. 

  
  
  


"You can sleep in the hearth," the old woman said, indicating the flat stones edging the fireplace. She hadn't offered a name, and Buffy wasn’t sure how to ask without revealing her own, the not-giving of which was one of the few clear rules their research had been able to glean about magic-mirror-fairy-tale-land. She'd have to pick one to go by here before anyone asked.   


"Thank you."

The woman stared at her stonily, giving nothing away. "You'll keep it burning for the night," she murmured, then picked up her candle in its little holder again. "Time these old bones went to bed." She took the candle with her and left through a small door at the back of the room, closing it behind her.   


Buffy eyed the fireplace, then bent to check the temperature of the stones she was to sleep on. They were deliciously warm, like loaves of bread fresh from the oven, flour-dusted and baked to a hard crust; almost too hot against her chilled skin. Her fingers came away shaded with a brushing of charcoal, and she eyed her blue jeans and pastel shirt reluctantly. There were a pair of rocking chairs standing further back from the hearth, carved of stiff wood but covered with inviting layers of knitted blankets and throw cushions. No. She wasn't going to be that fool. With a sigh, she sat down on the warm stones, her back to the fire, and resigned herself to an uncomfortable night.

  
  
  


The castle was quiet and peaceful when he slid in one of the back doors, everyone going about their business with the easy relaxation typical of an early night of the week. He avoided occupied spaces, stealing down empty hallways with his ears wide for any snatches of gossip behind closed doors, slinking off around corners whenever footsteps approached. Juniper was fooling around with the chef's son again. A group of the wait-staff were placing bets on the outcome of some prank they aimed to pull at the next feast. The wizard was up late with his telescope, charting the latest additions to the constellations on his large sheets of vellum; Spike paused outside that door, considering padding inside quietly to watch the man work, then remembered he had other concerns this night.   


There being no news to be had in the building and no signs of alarm, he found himself a spot under the massive front steps and settled in to nap while he waited for something to happen. 

  
  
  


Buffy opened her eyes to pale yellow morning light, and realised she must have fallen asleep after all. The stone under her cheek was just above lukewarm and surprisingly comfortable, if one ignored the grubbiness of it. She quickly sat up, brushing at the side of her face before giving up to stretch her arms out with a wide yawn, the muzziness wrought of deep, restful sleep fading with it. Her back was too hot, sunburn-hot, which had probably been what woke her, and she shuffled away from the fireplace, twisting around to face it. She probably should have checked it before she slept, added some sticks or coal or something, but she hadn't meant to sleep and didn't really know what to do with the vague instruction that she keep it burning. It looked okay anyhow, flames still flickering away, if stripped of most of the effect of their colour and light by the sun's competition.   


The door at the front of the room opened, and the old woman bustled in with a bowl tucked into one arm, stopping to toe off her boots. Buffy sat up straighter, feeling all sorts of awkwardly misplaced, then had a better thought and jumped up, offering to take the bowl for her. She was handed a bowl full of colourful eggs, rainbow-splattered and all of different sizes, nested on a layer of straw.   


"Pop them on the table," the woman said, "and we'll have us a spot of breakfast."

Buffy did, trying to silence her curiosity with the importance of watching her tongue. "They're beautiful colours," she said lightly.   


The woman frowned at her quizzically. "They're eggs, child. Strange one, aren't you? Not from around here, perhaps?" She took the seat opposite Buffy and picked up one of the eggs, its shell all blue and green swirls with pink polka dots. "Go on. You won't last long if you don't eat anything. And if I'd had any plans on gobbling you up, I'd have done it in the night. No meat worth the effort on those bones though, is there?" She cackled at the end; too amused to be clearly threatening, too unknowable to be at all reassuring.

Buffy smiled, made herself laugh along slightly, and picked up a small egg of her own. They were marshmallow. Or something like it. Cushiony and sweet, eaten whole in soft bites. Her lilac and blue one tasted faintly of lavender, and she wondered whether the others were as different in flavour as their outsides suggested.   


"So, Cindery-child," the woman said, "will you be staying to sweep my hearth and scrub my floors? I could do with a new young one about the place, since the last one went and escaped."

"I-"  _ must not insult creepy old women in strange cottages _ . "Can't. I'm sorry, but I'm… on a journey." The wisdom of offering more than that was debatable, but she wasn't going to learn much without asking… "I'm looking for someone. Who was lost."

"What sort of someone?" the woman asked.   


"He… might have come here by mistake, from a different… world. I need to find him."

"Ah. That does sound like quite a journey." She tapped her finger against her lip in thought, gazing out of the window. "When did this friend of yours go missing?"   


She thought about lying via vagueness, but was that too close to lying? Fairy-tale rules were contradictory and confusing, no matter how many times she'd read them. Besides, she'd already eaten the food here. She threw the circular debate out of the window. "Two years ago."

"Ahh," the woman said, as though her suspicions had been confirmed. "You'll need to see the queen about that one. Let me think…" She looked around the room, shrewdly assessing, then ticked points off on her fingers as she spoke, "You clean out the fireplace. You scrub this floor. You knead the dough for my bread tonight. I shall find you something presentable to wear, pack you some lunch, and give you directions to obtain an audience at the castle. Yes?"   


"Umm, yes. I can do that." Somehow.   


"Good. Egg?" She held the basket out.

  
  


Buffy made it passably through the fireplace-cleaning and floor-scrubbing, then was admonished for putting too much pressure on the bread dough (and since when did dough have feelings?) and sent outside to chop kindling instead. Chopping kindling involved using an axe, and so she found the task much better suited to her strengths.   


"Good," the still-nameless old woman said, joining her by the woodpile. "That’s enough.” She held out a bag, made of hessian tied up into a sack. “Lunch. Dress. Don’t worry about the state of you, the dress’ll take care of it. You’re going to the evening’s castle ball; be at the gate after sunset but before midnight. The queen may be addressed as Your Majesty or Snow White, and you may petition her only whilst she sits on her throne.” The woman glanced up at the noonday sun, then cocked a thumb towards the dirt drive. “Best get walking.” Then she turned around and shuffled into her house with surprising speed, slamming the door.

Buffy could take a hint. Shrugging the bag’s rope handle onto her shoulder, she set off down the driveway. Or was it a walkway? Presumably they had carriages here. Perhaps she should have tried to barter for one in the deal. Not that she’d seen any pumpkins around. Or wanted to know what it would have cost her in housework.   


The walk-drive-way, to her relief, was joined by others, widening and growing like a stream she'd joined at its headwaters, saving her from the need to choose a direction yet. She passed trees and paddocks and planted fields, two brown cows, a small flock of sheep with suspicious orange eyes that would have been positively vampiric were it not for their big sideways bricks of pupils, and zero people. The temptation to open the fairly light bag on her shoulder and inspect her hard-earned booty hovered nearby, and she dangled it before her like a carrot for the long hours of walking, singing to herself in snatches to interrupt the monotony.   


Somewhere around mid-afternoon her luck ran out, the road bisecting another at right angles. A wooden post at the centre of the junction held rune-like markings on each side; none of them meant anything to her. She turned in a circle, scanning for any sign of a castley building or anyone to ask about it, and coming up empty. She'd give it ten minutes for someone to come along before hazarding a guess. Her legs could do with the break, and her stomach was reminding her that there ought to be some sort of food in their sack and that she wouldn’t know how edible it was if she never gave it a chance.   


Sitting on one of the big rocks surrounding the signpost, she untied the rope and looked inside. The dress was  _ gorgeous,  _ a tight bodice cascading out into some shimmering sky-blue and iridescent pastel fabric that definitely did not exist back home. Tucked under it was a pair of clear glass heels, the angles and facets of them refracting rainbows where they caught the light. She grinned. Cinderella would do for a name then, and she was going to a  _ ball _ .   


She'd better get on with finding it. Rolling the dress back up as carefully as she could, she felt around in the bottom of the bag and came up with an apple, candy-red and polished to a perfect gloss, complete with the stereotypical single leaf on its stalk. Standing up, she compared the apple in her palm to the signpost, and realised what one of the markings etched into it might be meant to depict.  _ Snow White's apple, this way. _ "And let's  _ not  _ go with tasting it," she murmured. After a short deliberation, she tucked it back into her bag and wiped her hands on the grass. Which was pointless, she knew, but still made her feel better. Then she shouldered her bag, and took the turn on the sign.


	5. At the ball

The castle checked all the boxes little-girl-Buffy would once have dreamed of; turrets and towers, pointy-topped roofs jutting up everywhere, spiralling stairs and paired sets of windows, views over a wide expanse of rolling kingdom. The copse of trees now coming up on her right looked to be the last one before she would reach it, so she veered off the road to get changed.   


The dress  _ felt _ as gorgeous as it looked, buttoning firmly on her waist, the ruffled collar sitting wide on her shoulders before plunging down to display a hint of cleavage. And the best part? Somewhere between pulling it over her head and tracking down all the buttonholes, her hair had done itself, sweeping up into some sort of overly-complicated woven thing she'd have had no idea how to attempt. A cautious dab at her eyelid left a hint of something shimmery on her finger, backing her suspicions;  _ now with free makeup included! _ God, a slayer could get used to this. No pumpkin-slime Buffy tonight, mister (on that matter, it was probably lucky she hadn't angled for a coach-shaped one to go home in). A mirror would have been nice, but she was staying the hell away from any that might present themselves before she had Angel by her side and ready to jump. Hopefully he'd be  _ at _ the castle. Then she could grab him and maybe flee with this dress intact. It would make sense for him to be; when he'd been unable to find a way to get home, offering his help to the leaders of the local community would have let him keep working for the forces of good, while also positioning himself to hear any news of a rescue attempt. It had taken  _ so long,  _ but it would probably seem like less to him, with what people said about time going faster the older you got… she just hoped he wasn't locked up miserably in the dungeon. And that was her worst-case scenario, which she was sticking to.  _ Onward to the rescuing and the 'they lived happily ever after'.   
_

Fairy lights in glass jars were strung along the path to the castle, up the grand staircase to the door, and scattered throughout the formal garden on either side, twinkling like tiny bright stars. People were everywhere, walking the gardens in twos and threes, milling about on the path, stopping in the entrance to offload coats and bags to a doorman. Their attire was uniformly extravagant, women in gowns of every shade with gemstones glittering at ears and throats, men in coats with double rows of buttons that shone just as brightly. The windows facing the garden stood open, light and sound spilling through them, golden and warm, merry laughter and bubbling voices and soft classical music.   


Buffy shifted the hessian sack holding her clothes to a more unobtrusive position under her arm, steeled her spine, and walked towards the front door as though she'd been invited, a polite smile fixed on her face.   


The doorman took her bag with a professional lack of reaction, then she was inside.

The place was  _ stunning.  _ Every inch of it radiated wealth and class, opulence and luxury. She stood in a huge entry hall, across from a wide staircase leading up to a landing, open double doors on her left inviting her in with the music flooding from them. Following the pair of women in front of her, Buffy edged her way through the crowd -  _ gorgeously wide dress, somewhat awkward to maneouver in  _ \- and crossed through the double doors into what seemed to be the ballroom. Or some kind of multi-purpose reception space, given the dais built into one end and the (empty) throne sitting proudly on it. Eyes swept her up and down as she entered, the women coolly appraising, men more appreciative, but no one seemed to be alarmed or questioning her presence. Apparently the right attire was all the invite she needed.   


A long buffet table stood groaning by one wall, and her stomach led her to it with an answering growl. Besides, it looked like the most out of the way spot to observe from while she waited for this queen to appear. 

  
  
  


The slayer was  _ here. _ She'd waltzed right in the front door as if she hadn't a care, and now she was stuffing her face at the hors d'oeuvres. A champagne flute in one hand, her eyes darted about surreptitiously again before she plucked another canapé from the table, making short work of it with one giant bite. Spike swept his tongue over his teeth, considering. She'd not noticed him back here. Part of him wanted to bound out into the middle of the dance floor and seize the attention he deserved from her; turn that slender throat she was displaying so blithely into a ruby fountain to decorate the floor. Unauthorised bloodshed was forbidden in the ballroom, but hell if it wouldn't be worth it. A more sensible part of him urged caution, however. Again, she'd not noticed him, and wasn't likely to recognise him even if she did. Silly to give up the element of surprise before he knew what weapons she was hiding under those acres of skirt. And given her apparel and the speed with which she'd set about gaining entrance here, likely she had backup behind her. So he hung back, behind the peacock crowd, close to the private door the queen would enter through, watching. 

  
  
  


"You look like you're enjoying those," a voice said warmly.

Buffy flushed, gulping down her mouthful before turning to the speaker. He was just as gorgeous as everything else here. Dark hair that fell back from his face in luxurious waves, golden embroidery emblazoning the deep green velvet of his coat. His eyes were the same pure, crystalline blue as the bodice of her dress, and it crossed her mind briefly that hers could match his coat, were they only more vividly saturated. Also, the hilt of a sword hung at his belt, something short but finely made if the sheath was anything to go by. She did love a man who knew how to carry a weapon. His face was open and confident in both its handsomeness and its friendliness, and she had to smile back. "Yes. Kinda skipped lunch."

"As did I," he said, grin widening. "They always have the most exquisite dainties at these affairs. Well worth waiting for. Will you dance with me now, or shall we eat more first?"

Buffy dropped her lashes coyly at the maybe-compliment, smiling to postpone a response. It couldn't hurt to dance, could it? And he didn't seem like he was going to be easily fobbed off. "I'm not certain I know all the steps here," she admitted. The crowd in the middle of the floor were currently all sort of swaying and rotating slowly in their pairs, but what if they broke into some sort of structured group dance once she stepped out there?

"I am certain I can teach you," he said confidently. Then with his smile turning cheeky, he added, "And if I fail, you can blame my terrible tutoring."

"I do believe you might be charming me," she said, light and teasing as she fished for confirmation.   


He laughed again. "I am known for it." He extended a hand with a little bowing-thing and told her, " _ Prince  _ Charming. At your service, m'lady, if you would be my little Cinder for the eve."

"I'm not agreeing to marry you or anything, am I?" she asked, serious beneath the flippancy.

"Not at all," he promised, warm amusement in it. "Come and have fun, and change the costume when it suits."

"Okay," she said, and let him take her hand. 

  
  
  


Charming proved to be the very archetype of his name, engaging her with soft humour and gentle compliments while he encouraged her efforts to copy some of the more formal of the dance steps on show around them. The huge, ruffly flair of her dress kept him at a more than respectable distance, the fingertips of one hand just stretching to sit on the side of her waist genteelly while his other hand still held hers delicately. And despite the mission that had brought her here and which she would have to get back to at some point, right now? She was having fun.

The music had just changed, a more energetic rhythm slowing down into hauntingly beautiful notes of the small orchestra's violins, when a sensation on the back of her neck froze her in place. She dropped Charming's hand to turn slowly to look behind her, heart thumping in her chest with a jolt of hope and fear.

"May I cut in?" Angel asked.   


He was here. Whole and apparently unharmed, resplendent as any other man on the dance floor, with a black and red brocade jacket and… white tights? And shining black boots that made him even taller than she remembered, big and solid and the very image of everything would be alright now.   


"Angel," she whispered, grasping his hand.   


Behind her, Charming said something in reply, and she turned back to him apologetically, hand tight on Angel's. Charming's face showed a hint of well-hidden disapproval as he looked up at Angel, before he dropped his eyes back to her and it faded away.

"Sorry," she fumbled out. "I've just-"

"It's perfectly okay," he said smoothly. "Thank you for the exquisite gift of your company this evening." He gave another little bow, then vanished into the crowd.

"Angel, how- Are you-" she began, tripping over her tongue in a flood of breathless excitement at the fact that he really  _ was _ here, and alive (well, undead), and now holding onto her with one of his hands too.

"Shh," he hissed, pulling her a little closer and nudging her to start dancing. Once her feet were sort of shuffling about again, he leaned in and whispered, "Buffy, what are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you," she whispered back. "Sorry it took me so long."

He was silent for several beats, turning them in a slow circle with his eyes warily scanning the crowd past her shoulders. “You can’t.”

“Um, yes I can,” she whispered hotly.

“No, I mean- I’m sworn to the queen’s service. I promised her seven years, and there’s still… uh, five left.”

"Or what?" she asked.   


"Or I forfeit my soul."

"But the mirror didn't actually do anything to it." And hadn't that been the ouchiest of crushing discoveries. "It was just a door. You don't need to be here."

"No, you don't- She has power, Buffy. She'll  _ take  _ it, if I breach my bargain."

"Who?" she asked quietly, an icy suspicion creeping across her scalp.

"The queen- Drusilla."

With an abrupt screech of a string somewhere in the mix, the music shifted swiftly into an orchestral version of a herald's trumpeting, then fell silent. Dancing halted, conversations halted, and all heads turned to the dais, Buffy taking the cue to follow them. Drusilla stepped out of a small doorway beside it and made her way up onto the platform, where she stood to face the assembly before her throne. She did make a good Snow White. If Snow White was as white as bleached bone, as black as Death's robe, as red as- well, blood, she'd got that one right.   


" _ Bow," _ Angel whispered, tugging at her hand before pulling his free.   


She ignored him. Drusilla's mesmerising, too-large eyes darted over the crowd predatorily as everyone else began to bow down, faces turning to the floor, then finally made their way over to meet Buffy’s. If she was at all surprised, nothing showed. Glaring stonily, Buffy bent her waist in a small hint of a nod, never looking away, then straightened up again.

Drusilla smiled, just far enough to show her teeth. Then she backed away and sat down on her throne.

All around Buffy, people straightened up again and began to resume their conversations, unmindful of the vampire watching over them like cattle. The music swelled up in a faster dance and the crowd began moving with it.

"Come on," she ordered, marching towards the clear area before the dais. She was still several yards away when a movement to one side caught her eye, something shifting its weight in the darkness by the small door there, making her pause to look closer.

It was a wolf. Too pale to fully merge into the shadows; its eyes too knowing, gleaming with heated warning as they stared back at her. No, not its. His.

"Spike?" she asked quizzically, thrown by this unexpected appearance of him. His eyes widened slightly, and he blinked at her in surprise before quickly narrowing them in a glare. "Why-" she began, then shook off the distraction to turn back to Drusilla. She could ask Angel about it later. After she'd rescued him. To that end, she stopped before the stage and looked up at Drusilla steadily, wishing she knew what the protocol here was supposed to be before she would go ahead and ignore it anyway.   


"I'm here for Angel," she announced. "Let him leave with me now, and nothing else has to happen."

Drusilla smiled, the excited smile of a child bursting with a secret, disturbing and wrong on her lifeless face. "Or what? You cannot fight the essence of a kingdom, little slayer. And he has sworn allegiance to one."

_ Bummer.  _ Dusting Drusilla with the stake tucked into her undies probably wouldn’t help then. Time for plan b.  _ Here's to all that fairy-tale research paying off.  _ "Maybe not," she said. "But I can challenge one. Name your three tasks."

Behind her Angel hissed in a breath, and several conversations fell silent.  _ Guess the potshot worked.   
_

"Buffy, you can't-" Angel said, for the second time tonight.   


"I know what I'm doing," she hissed back.  _ I hope.   
_

Drusilla considered her in silence for a long moment, then shrugged and beckoned to a waiter standing unobtrusively to the side. He stepped forward with a tray of small, slow-moving furry creatures about the size of guinea pigs, and she picked one out, shifted into vampface, and sunk her fangs into it with a dull crunch. The creature's back legs kicked feebly a couple of times, then slowly went limp, and she dropped it back on the tray. "I do like to play," she said, musing. "Three tasks, of my choosing, then you can name your prize from all that the kingdom has to offer. Try to back out, and you become mine, to do with as I please."

"Agreed," Buffy said, several frightening  _ what if's _ belatedly leaping to mind.   


"Good. Present yourself before me at dawn for the first. Woodcutter, find her a room here."   


"Yes, Your Majesty," Angel said, bowing again.   


_ Why don't you lick her boots while you're down there? _   


Then he took her arm firmly, and led her from the hall.

  
  
  
  


They gradually left the crowd behind them, taking several dizzying twists and turns down corridors and up stairs until they were hurrying alone down a long, stone-walled walkway. Buffy pulled her arm free to stop in place and slip off her shoes; glass heels, not so much with the comfort when jogging through a castle. Ditto extravagant gowns. But worth it.   


"What do you think you're doing?" Angel snapped, turning to her.   


"Saving my toes from a terrible bruising?"

He shook his head, frustrated. "Not that. You can't attempt Dru's challenge tomorrow. She'll set you something deadly. And rigged."

"I'm hearing a lot of can'ts tonight," she muttered, then looked up at him firmly. "Angel, I can do this. Or at least use it to stall while we think of something else." She brought her hand up to touch his shoulder, wishing she could jump into his arms without potentially suffocating them both in tulle. And wishing she felt welcome to try anyway. "God, I can't believe I've finally found you."

He smiled, agitation fading. "Yeah. It's good to see you too. Come on, there's a nice room in one of the back turrets. You'll be safe there for the night." They started walking again.   


"I won't be safe roaming the halls?" she asked. There was too much here she didn't know, or understand, and Angel had never exactly been the most forthcoming of people.   


"No. The staff are all loyal to the queen. And any one of them might take it on themselves to try and remove you for her protection. You should be left alone as long as you follow Snow White’s orders, but step outside them and they'll act."

"Why?"

"It's a long story."

Helpful. "So what happened to Spike?" she asked.   


He snorted. "She fancied a hound. Like I said, she has power here."

  
  


Angel showed her into a small bedroom that was, as promised, in a turret. The circular space had deep windows everywhere but where the doorway attached it to the castle proper, a ceiling that vanished up into a point, and views over a rear courtyard and topiary garden. A huge, plush-looking canopied bed filled the centre, hung with fine gossamer curtains, and a beautifully carved chest stood at its foot, on which he set the small candle he'd taken from outside the door.   


Then he promptly left, promising to send someone to wake her - with a change of clothes - before dawn, and telling her to latch the door behind him. So much for the perfect romantic reunion. But he was right. She needed to be preparing for whatever tomorrow might hold, not staying awake all night catching up with him. There'd be plenty of time for that once they were back in Sunnydale. Although it would have been helpful to pick his brains about this place, and what sort of challenge  _ Drusilla _ might think of.   


She lifted her acres of skirt high enough to jump up onto the bed and sit down, where they promptly puffed out around her to chest height. She should have asked Angel to retrieve her bag. But maybe there was something in the chest.   


It proved to be full of spare blankets; soft, fuzzy, brown knitted ones, satiny white sheets, embroidered pillowcases. After crouching below the level of the windows and blowing out her candle for good measure, she freed herself from her dress and wrapped one of the sheets on like a toga. Her hair tumbled back down with the dress's removal, gone slightly wavy from being restrained by its invisible ties, and she began smoothing it with her fingers, restless and fidgety. Pacing a loop of the room, she peered out of each window again, finding nothing moving in the dark courtyard or beyond. Some of the parts of the castle that were in view glowed with small lights, and she followed the movement of one down what must have been yet another corridor, but no sound reached her distant room and everything seemed calm. Finally she climbed into bed to stare up at the ceiling and imagine what she might be tasked with at dawn. Was it too much to hope for that they'd have a small dragon that needed slaying? Or a riddle, the kind with no time limit, so she could stretch it out indefinitely while she worked out how to  _ steal _ Angel free. And how to get him home with her. Kendra would have taken the mirror safely to Giles's, she had no worries there, but whether jumping back into where she'd arrived would let her pop back through… well, she'd find out when they tried. 

  
  
  


He'd followed them at a distance, ears and nose making it easy to stay a turn out of sight without losing them or missing any of the conversation. Not that there was much to miss. Angel was obviously keeping things close to his chest, as embarrassed as a man whose mistress has dropped in during a family gathering. Spike thought about following him when he deposited Buffy and ran, maybe making a few pointed jibes about how quick he'd been to forget the girl and just how did he think he was going to explain his relationship with Dru to her? But that blade was double-edged, and he still had yet to decide which possible outcome he was striving for here. Cruel to make a man choose between getting rid of his mortal enemy and his immortal one. So he'd watched Angel go and taken up a position watching the slayer's door, just in case she thought to get her murder on.

She'd changed, that much had been obvious the moment she walked into the ballroom. Gone was the shade of schoolgirl naivety to her, the innocence in her smile. She'd been - ha -  _ charmed _ , obviously, by the ridiculous fairy-tale splendour and the attentions of a dashing young man, but it had all been play-acting, a surface enjoyment while she worked. She looked harder, colder; remote from the crowd around her. Or maybe she'd just had a long day and was in a crowd of strangers. She'd certainly softened for  _ Angel.  _ Or had until he'd tried to boss her around like everyone else around here, and that fire he remembered had flared up beautifully in indignation. Nope, Angel had a shock coming if he thought he could put the reins back on now. Not that he seemed keen to try.

  
  
  


A rap at her door startled Buffy from the half-doze she'd drifted into, and she slid out of bed quickly to answer it. The sky outside of her windows was lightening, deep blue-blacks giving way to a pale pre-dawn wash on the left side. Go time.

The man stood back from her door nervously, a stack of folded clothing held before him. She took it with a smile and a thank you, both direct enough to discourage any suggestion that she might not be as tough as the rumour mill obviously suggested, and he retreated two steps further before telling her he would be waiting to escort her to the hall.

Laying the pile on her bed, she spread everything out and considered the options. Long dress or long dress or long-and-heavy dress, all with matching corset-type thingies.  _ I'm going to have to do that thing where I wear boy's clothes, aren't I?  _ Maybe Charming could be persuaded to lend her something. Like some tights that came with a sword. Right now, though… She picked the lightest, simplest of the dresses, a short-sleeved earthy-red thing that fell to her ankles, and contorted her way into lacing a corset over it. The single pair of shoes she'd been given were low-heeled suede boots, surprisingly well-fitting and infinitely more practical than glass slippers.

"I don't suppose there's a mirror I could use?" she asked her chaperone.   


His face both paled and darkened, and he told her curtly, "There are no such things in the kingdom."

"Figures," she grumbled.   


The ballroom had emptied out, splendour of the night before replaced by post-party detritus, several slumbering (she hoped) bodies, and waiters with brooms. As they entered, Drusilla looked up from a card table where she faced an orange tabby cat over some sort of board game, then turned back to clap her hands in front of the creature, startling it into bolting. Laughing, she floated up from the table to take her seat on the throne just as Angel slipped in behind Buffy to stand stiffly by the door.

"Your first task," Drusilla announced, then pulled a disappointed face and let her eyes drift away in thought.   


Buffy ground her teeth impatiently.  _ Well, if she hasn't thought of anything, at least it won't be pre-rigged. _   


"The trolls," she said finally. "They have something of mine. Go and fetch it. In time for the ball."

_ Trolls? _ That was… not the worst thing she could have said.   


"You'll like them," Drusilla said encouragingly. "Have fun, won't you?"

  
  
  


"Trolls?" she asked Angel once he'd followed her back into the entrance hall.   


He grimaced. "Foul things. And too much for you."

She lifted her eyebrows.   


"They- they  _ eat _ young women. And worse. No one's dared go near the hills they live in for centuries. There are tapestries about it, in the library."

"If no one's been there for centuries, how do you even know they're still there?"   


"Oh, they will be. Things can only change so far around here," he said cryptically.   


_ Hmm.  _ "When's the next ball?"

"Tomorrow night- Look, go back to your room and keep your head down. I'll keep trying to talk to Snow- Drusilla. Negotiate something. She never wanted you here."

"You do that, I'll head out and investigate these trolls, in case we need more time. Which hills?"   


He glared back at her in stubborn silence.   


"Angel, I'm the slayer, remember?" she said, softening her voice and adding a smile. She'd forgotten what it was like to have someone determined to protect her personally from the monsters; he'd obviously forgotten what she could do. "I can handle myself. Or you could always come with?"

Angel sighed and shook his head. "I'm not allowed to help you. And it’ll take you all day to get there." He turned his face away at an angle, jaw shifting in frustrated decision. "Rocky cliffs to the south, you can't miss them. The trolls work a mine underneath."

"Alright. Well, good luck with the negotiating." She smiled up at him, hoping for a kiss or, hell, some tiny hint of affection or optimism to harden her conviction that this would all work out. This was fairy-tale land, dammit, and she wanted one.

"Yeah. Good luck," he said, turning away.


	6. Task the first

Slayer was  _ walking,  _ as if she'd never heard of horses. Or, he thought with a chuff of laughter, hadn't been offered one. Satisfaction in watching someone else get short shift around here. He'd almost missed her exit with the speed she'd set off at; no planning session or attempt to argue the semantics of the scanty instructions she'd been given, just tossed her hair back and set out down the road. Either she had all the weapons she thought she could possibly need, or she was thicker than he'd given her credit for. And the second one couldn't be true, on account of her history of besting his best efforts to deal with her.   


He followed at a distance while she cleared the village surrounding the castle, ducking out of sight whenever she glanced back suspiciously. Wondered whether he still gave her any hint of vampire, or if the disguise was complete in that degree. Not that it had worked on her last night. Had forgotten, in all the bandying about of  _ Hound _ , that he more closely resembled the wolf she'd met long before, a few differences in senses aside. Though why she should jump straight to the truth of his identity… perhaps she habitually greeted all big white canines with his name, just in case.   


A hundred metres into the woodlands, the slayer stopped in place and turned around, planting her feet as though she intended to wait as long as she needed to. Out of sight through the underbrush, he stopped too, content in his ability to outwait her; she was tense and full of unresolved questions, he was taking his time answering his own.

"Spike!" she called out, "I know you're following me, so stop cowering under the bushes!"

Well, crap. He debated staying silent, letting her wonder and begin to worry as his unseen presence continued to shadow her steps. But what was the point. The fun of spooking people walking in the woods alone had long since faded, and here was the opportunity to rankle someone's nerves in an entirely different way. "Maybe I'm waiting for the right place to jump you," he said smoothly, stepping out onto the path.   


Her eyes twitched in surprise at how close he'd been, or perhaps at his having spake, then she recovered to direct a scathingly scornful look at him. "What, with your dog-breath?" she asked, then turned her back on him to sweep away.   


In a few long, fleet steps he was in front of her, lips pulled up from his teeth as he snarled, "You wanna watch who you're turning your back on, slayer. Could tear you apart right here."   


Her hands curled instantly into fists and lifted in defence, but other than stopping in place again to avoid walking into him, she held her ground. "Are wolves always so insecure?" she asked, and although the tone of battle-quipping was there, it was tempered by a hint of remorse for having inadvertently hit a sore spot, which stung more than her bare words could have.   


"I'm not the one too afraid to ask her beloved why he's less than overjoyed by the arrival of a rescue party," he mocked, dropping his ominous growl for a contemptuous sneer. "Tell me, are you racing off out here because you've always had a yen to fight a bunch of trolls, or because you're afraid of what you might find out back at the castle?" Grinning, he spun on his heel and strutted ahead down the path.

It took her a moment, then she was stomping along behind him with enough anger to set his tail alight.

"He's just worried for me," she declared a moment later, probably with less certainty than she’d intended. Muttering under her breath she added, "Not that it's any of your business."

"True," he said lightly, slowing his feet for her to catch up level so he could watch the expressions on her face. "I'm just here to watch you fail, one way or another."

"Is that that your job? Keeping me from taking Angel?"   


"Maybe," he said, shrugging.   


"Huh," she said, all careless disinterest. "I'd have thought you'd be glad to see him gone."

"Maybe that's next."

Silence reigned for a few turns of the path, then she asked curiously, "Does he actually chop wood?" At his blank look, she added, "Angel. Drusilla called him 'Woodcutter'."   


He huffed a scoff of a laugh. "Not that I've ever seen. But everyone's got a title around here,  _ Cinder." _   


"So how did Drusilla’s become  _ Queen Snow White _ ?"

"Long story," he said, all flippant-like and refusing to let his snicker become audible.

"' _ Long story'," _ she parroted back, oozing sarcasm with a wrinkle of her nose. "How about you, then? How long have you been-" she waved a hand over him- "all with the four leggage?"   


"Anyone ever tell you you're a nosy little bint?" he hit back. It wouldn't shut her up, though. "Since we got here," he said, because what did it matter? Trolls would probably eat her shortly; problem solved. He threw her a humouring glance. "It's not that long a story. Fell out through a mirror in the castle..."  
  


(  Spike hit the stone floor and  _ screamed, _ the sound torn ragged from his chest in all the agony of barely-healed bone and sinew fracturing and wrenching, sharpened by the terror of pain and light blinding him to helping Dru against her kidnapper. The crash of breaking glass lent its tinkling blades of accompaniment as Dru shattered the looking-glass behind them, the sounds fading out together as his lungs ran dry. 

  
"Where the hell are we?" Angel growled, wary and sounding a good few yards away from him and Dru.

  
"In my castle," Dru said calmly. "Now, I think…" 

  
Spike opened his eyes to see her reach down the front of her dress, producing that same book she'd been tinkering with all month and flicking through a few pages.

  
"...yes," she murmured, then snapped it shut to kneel down beside him. Her hand came out to hover before his face, the two sharpened incisors of her fingers bared, a cobra's fangs, circling, tugging him with the pull of a moon tide into the deeps of her eyes. The ocean of her swallowed over his pain, and he sank bonelessly into it as she lilted, " _ Be my hound. Be Garmr, be bloody, be loyal as you guard my gate." _

  
The transformation surged forth, lifting him from that dreamy ocean to smash thundering against a rocky shore, the magic roiling, foaming into white spray where it met some unexpected resistance, roaring and whooshing in frustration as its path was directed into channels carved by previous tides. 

  
He lay gasping as the water retreated, a thumping heartbeat hammering at his chest and hot, foamy slaver coating his dangling tongue. The pain in his back was gone, replaced by a million strange - but not entirely unknown - sensations, and he swept his tongue over the sides of his muzzle a couple of times to clean it of the choking salt and steady his breath. 

  
Dru stared down at him with crestfallen eyes, a whining cry of disappointment building swiftly in her throat. 

  
"What the…" Angel started in astonishment. 

  
"It is a hound!" she spat, whirling on him in a fury. "And he shall bring me your dead heart on a platter if you do not behave!" )  
  


"...where the wicked stepmother was in charge. Poverty and misery in the populace; orphans crying in the street and all of that shyte. Dru ate her, claimed the crown, and promised them all a more benevolent leadership if they played nice. Sense prevailed and they fell at her feet."

"But she's evil," the slayer attested, quizzical.

"Well, yeah," he said, rolling his eyes. "Comes in a million shades though, don't it? Stepmother's brand was the cruelty of indifference, sitting comfortable up in her castle and never looking down on the starving hoards. Dru might have plucked a few eyes out, severed a few necks… gutted that dignitary on the staircase… but at least people feel  _ noticed _ when their intestines are being ripped out through their navels. As though their actions have had some effect." Slayer's face was well twisted up in distaste now, making him chuckle. "'Sides, lot more to unlife than slaughter. She likes her parties, all that frippery and finery. Likes the games she can make them all play. And if someone loses occasionally… just makes the next sap try harder. They can spare the odd life now that prosperity abounds."

She was quiet for a while, turning that over against her do-gooder values system and trying to make the square peg piss off. "And Angel?" she asked eventually.   


"Out of his depths in the morass of his creation." He let her frown over that while he picked through his next words, searching for an angle that would lend itself to whichever outcome to all this he chose to back. "Moped around the place for awhile, under the thumb of Dru's fairy-tale affinity. Stuck his head up to try and stop her gobbling down a children's birthday party. After that, decided to make himself the mighty protector of the people, saving maidens left and right with his woodcutter's axe. Swore seven years fealty to the crown on her head, pawned ownership of his cursed soul as security, and now guarantees visitor safety at all castle shindigs."

That little spanner to her plans shut her up. Probably should have kept it to himself, but hell, she'd have got to the facts eventually even with Captain Closed-lips. Still, it suited none of his plans for her to see sense and skip off home alone, so with a falsely innocent tilt of his head he asked, "You changing your mind, slayer? Thinking the oaf is best left in his chains?"   


"No," she snapped back, scowling darkly as though it were somehow all his fault.   


God was she bitchy this morning. He grinned again, tongue lolling. "Good. There's only so much hypocritical anti-heroism a kingdom can take before it's compelled to blow its brains out for relief. Save us all the drama. And once you have, mind that it's no returns."

"So you  _ do _ want me to succeed," she said, dangling for a response and ignoring the slight to Angel. "And thus I ask again, is that your job around here?"

"My only  _ job, _ ” he said coldly, “is to protect my queen. Don't forget it."

Unexpectedly, her expression became softer at his implied threat, a hint of something both sad and fond canting up the side of her mouth. "I won't," she said gently.

It made his fur prickle in discomfort, and he looked sharply away.

"So," she said, snapping back to the lighter business of business, "any guesses what exactly it is that Dru needs back from these trolls?"

"Nope," he said, matching her tone. "Haven't a damn clue."

  
  


From the edge of the woods, a wide, grassy plain stretched out to the craggy peaks of a mountain, all starkly bare stone above the few shrubby trees at its base. The path they’d been following ended with the wood, breaking up into small trails probably belonging to the sheep she could see grazing in the distance, but the grass ahead was as short and tidy as a cemetery lawn. And awfully exposed to anyone - or thing - watching from the cliffs.   


"That mountain?" she asked, eyeing the distance still to be covered with a pout. The sun was already halfway down in the sky, and maybe she should have paid more attention to the ‘it’ll take all day to get there’ and packed some supplies.   


“No, the other one,” Spike said dryly.   


His constant litany of mostly cynical jeers on their way through the woods had been at various times a welcome distraction, an infuriating pestilence, and a revealing opportunity to pick up more potentially useful information. Most often, all three. “Guess it’s not going to come to me,” she murmured, and started walking again.

“Should have called yourself Muhammed,” he replied, dropping in beside her. “You were right to drop the Red, though. Hardly the innocent little cusp-of-maidenhood creature now, are ya?”

“Did you just call me old?” she snapped, without any real heat.

“ _ Noo, _ I called you a woman. Unless there's something you're hiding? Don't be shy now, I know you've been sneaking glances at my danglies all day." His tail swept up to stand high above his haunches like some floofy duster brush of a flag, and he took a couple of faster steps to put his furry butt square in her line of sight.   


"You're disgusting," she snapped,  _ with  _ heat. "And I can't even see anything through your fur. Are you sure you haven't been neutered?”  _ I hear it’s what all good pet owners do _ was on the tip of her tongue, but she snatched it back in time. His emotions were no less (and quite possibly more) candid for his change in body shape, and that particular sore spot gaped so widely that she’d put it off-limits to herself. He had, after all, done  _ something _ to try and prevent what had gone down in a distant Sunnydale factory; it was enough to justify giving him a pass, irritating though he was. Besides, his ears had sort of drooped out to the sides when she'd stepped on his feelings at one point today, which had instantly made her feel terrible. It was harder than it should be to remember he was a soulless vampire when he just looked so… pattable.   


" _ Very _ sure," he called back, and paused to cock his leg over a clump of grass.   


"Disgusting and _ vulgar _ ," she muttered, marching past. Forget pattable.   


He dropped his leg and his fake peeing act and trotted to catch up again, tail bouncing lightly behind him as he asked, "So tell me, just how long _did_ it take you to get tired of waiting?"

  
  
  


"In there?" she asked in a reluctant whisper, peering around the edge of the rocks she crouched behind. The cave mouth ahead was the size of a garage door, an almost perfectly round circle of a deeper dark against the dark rocks and ground and sky.   


He said nothing, and she looked back to find him sitting there staring at her with a steady, sardonic expression that said it all.   


"In there," she grumbled, rolling her eyes and turning back to the cave. Although she'd paused more often to look and listen ahead as they got closer and night fell, she hadn't seen or heard anything to suggest any kind of trolls were still in residence. Spike’s nose had been working overtime, scenting the air and the ground and the rugged walls, but whatever he had or hadn't detected there, he wasn't sharing.   


"Scared, slayer?" he whispered, suddenly very close behind her.   


Glancing over her shoulder, she found his eyes glinting starlight at her with all the menacing glee he'd forgotten to inject them with during the day. He probably could tear her apart, as he'd threatened, if he caught her far enough off-guard. He was huge - for a dog; she wasn't really sure how big the average wolf was - and carried his four-legged body with as much comfortable grace and agility as he had his more upright form. Plus his teeth were much bigger. But that knowledge had never frightened her when he was bragging about bagging her as his latest slayer kill, and it sure wasn’t about to now.   


Of course, he hadn't been quite so sensitive about her perceived respect for his abilities back then. She glared at him to back off, smirking to herself when it seemed to satisfy him.

"I just know I'm going to trip over something, maybe break a nail," she sighed, eyeing up the impenetrable darkness again.   


"I'll watch that from right here," he said, sinking down onto his belly with his eyes on the entrance. "Remember to scream when they catch you?"

"Really don't do the screaming bit," she said lightly. "Sorry." Then she sidled around to the cave before she could have second thoughts.   


"You could back out," Spike called suddenly when she reached the entrance. "You know this whole idea is cracked. And stupid."

"Scared?" she asked, and ducked inside. 

  
  
  


The slayer had gone in there. He stood up, sniffing carefully, ears following her rapidly retreating feet as she moved through some larger interior space. Had kind of expected her to change her mind, or delay to look for a makeshift weapon, or maybe just keep walking across the field and never get here until he'd decided what he wanted to happen. Bloody efficient bitch. Dumb, but efficient.   


Perhaps he should have told her about the troll's scent, heavy and fresh and rank all around the cave.   


Perhaps he should have suggested she wait until dawn, when they were more likely to be sleepy, darkness-loving creatures as they were.   


If she hadn't been so hasty he would have. So it was all her own fault he hadn't.   


_ Now what? _ He was already at the cave mouth anyway, nose extended to test the air inside it; shifting his eyes to take best advantage of what tiny fraction of light there was in there, he crept in after her.   


The cave was significantly wider and higher inside the doorway; a tunnel the size of a small cathedral running down and around into the mountain. Warm air travelled up it, olid with sulphur but rich with the scent of roasting flesh. And troll.  _ Yech.  _ Spike padded down it on silent feet, sticking close to the side wall that her fingers had trailed a scent path along, ears pricked ahead and swivelling every few seconds to scan behind him.   


Down, and down, and down, in a slow curve that must have looped back over itself several times before a glow of firelight filtered up ahead. Setting his feet down even lighter, he snuck towards it. The tunnel opened out into a huge cavern that looked like it might have been naturally formed, walls of porous volcanic rock curving in and out with the texture of a lava flow. Towards one end a huge fire pit was set into the floor, flames flickering up under the dressed bodies of several sheep spitted at the end of it and providing the only light. Beside it stood the tall shapes of several drums, skins too large to have come from any creatures he had seen in the kingdom. Dragons, maybe?   


It was soon obvious that he needn't have been too worried about being noticed. The trolls - seven of them, each uglier than the last, near twenty feet tall and solid as the proverbial brick houses - were fully occupied by another intruder. One had her by the waist, his huge paw encircling it to hold her up in the air like a new doll for them all to inspect. Hell. There was no way he could take these things on. 

And no reason he should want to.

"...grind your bones to make our bread," the troll holding her was growling as Spike slunk into the cavern behind rocks and piles of junk.

"Isn't that the giant's line?" she asked, cocky as ever. "Cause you're really not  _ that  _ big." Her arms were crossing her chest over that massive hand, covering the tops of her pert little breasts from her inspector's view.

"Plenty bigger than you," the troll growled.

"Too much," added one of the others, frowning at her. "She cannot be here to woo us." His hand reached for the bottom of the slayer's dress, snagging the hem in his fingers and beginning to lift it pensively.   


She moved so fast he struggled to put it together. With a twist of her back her hands leapt out from her chest clutching ten inches of polished, pointy wood, which she slammed down two-handed into the flesh between the troll's thumb and forefinger. She yanked it out again just as fast, and as he opened his hand and began to yowl in pain and surprise, she fell to drive it into his foot with all of her weight behind it. Rolling to dodge the reactionary jerk of his foot, she came up in a crouch in the circle made by their feet, weapon bared and a deadly fury on her face. "Let's have a little talk about  _ personal space _ ," she hissed.   


The wounded troll wobbled on one leg trying to clutch his impaled hand and foot at once, then sat with a heavy thump that shook rocks throughout the cavern. "She is fierce," he grumbled.   


Booming laughter shook his companions, and one of them mimicked the awkward hopping he'd done before sitting down.   


"Like that lion," laughed the one who had touched her dress, and squatted down to reach a finger for her again.   


She whirled on it, brandishing her stake and a warning glare that made him chuckle and pull it back again.   


"Why is it that you come here?" he asked her. "We do not take kindly to thieves."

"I'm not a thief," she said sternly, then seemed to think quickly. "I am a visitor, whom you have treated most awfully. I come on official business of the queen." She stood up, chin lifted haughtily as she silently admonished them all.   


A ripple went around the circle as they seemed to consider this, then the same troll asked, "What is it that the queen wants with us?   


"You have something of hers. I have been tasked with retrieving it."

"Who _ is _ the queen at this time?" asked a new voice.   


"Snow White," she said, very neutrally.   


Trolls lifted their attention from her to look to each other, and a murmur of sentiments went around them.   


"Stay there," the talkative one ordered, pointing at her. "We need to discuss this."

She nodded once, crossing her arms, and they all shuffled away towards the fire pit to form a huddle, her brief captor still rubbing at his bleeding hand.   


" _ Psst _ ," Spike whispered, slipping around behind the nearest outcrop to her. Her head jumped to him and she lifted her eyebrows in surprise. "Now's when you run away," he said, because christ, these brutes weren't going to let her swan out of here with her prize unharmed, Snow White or no Snow White.   


" _ Noo _ , now's when I wait for an answer," she whispered back, then turned her head firmly away to the debating trolls.

_ Your funeral.  _ He huffed a snort of exasperation and turned his ears to the hushed debate going on across the cavern. There were suggestions that she might be a witch in disguise, or the lion they had eaten, come back in a new shape, or Snow White herself under a veil. At least two of them were pushing to eat her quickly too before she could do anything unexpected.   


A minute later they were shuffling back, Talky stopping before - and far above the head of - the slayer, with his hands planted on his hips. "We do have something which belongs to the queen," he told her, frowning. "We will give it to you,  _ if _ you can think of anything worthwhile to give in exchange. You are too small to lie with us all, and too prickly to wrestle."

She swept her eyes over them all with a hint of something wicked gleaming in them, as though she were contemplating asking who  _ wasn't  _ too big to 'lie with' her and maybe setting them to arguing with each other. Then she pursed her lips, thinking better of it. "I could clean your cavern?" she offered, sounding more hopeful that they'd refuse than accept.   


"Ha!" he barked, and an earth-shaking volley of laughter shot from them all. "What would we want with a clean cavern?" He shook his head at the ridiculousness of the idea, then looked at her expectantly again.   


The slayer looked around the room slowly, eyes pausing on the firepit, the trolls, the towering drums. "You play music?" she asked, and got a slight nod. "Then I will dance for you," she announced, with the first subtle hint of nervousness she had shown here. "And I will prove  _ not  _ too small to entertain you."

"Alright," Talky said, nodding agreement. "And if you do not, we shall eat you."   


"You can try," she retorted, and walked towards the fire.

  
  


The drums shook his teeth in his jaws, reverberating through his body until his lungs became drums of their own, the music a tangible beast filling every inch of the cavern and everything inside it with a shared pounding bassline and living vibration. And to that binding, pulsating rhythm, the slayer stepped up and danced.

She stood close behind the fire, flames reflecting on golds of skin and hair until the fire itself seemed only a spilling over from the movement of her body, something too bursting with life to be contained in the borders of her physical form. And behind her stretched her shadow, thrown high on the rear wall, as tall as any of the trolls and multiplying with the varying flaring of fiery tongues so that she was at once many dancers and one. The inversion was captivating, her illusory shadow form twisting and shifting, contorting in impossible ways as she angled herself towards and away from the spotlights of flame that threw their brightness forth as contrast.   


And the trolls seemed to be accepting it. Stamping feet joined the drumbeat, rattling the cavern's stones and piles of bones in a more-than-miniature earthquake; deep whooping calls that could have been their singing voices began to ring out.   


Encouraged, Buffy grinned before turning her back to the crowd and reaching for the laces of her corset, slipping them free and tossing the whole thing aside. He wondered if she was planning to strip - and, briefly, what she had on under the dress - but then she was moving again, stretching further, more fluidly, and her intentions in removing the rigid piece of clothing became clear. The music grew in response, slowly gaining speed in a circular loop of feedback where she both conducted it and answered its challenge, and all of it thudded and vibrated deeper through him to catch him up as both a part of the whole and all of it, hurtling him towards god-knew-what crescendo.   


Then the few instrument-less trolls were joining her, and yet not; standing back against the shadowcasting wall, feet stomping and hands clapping in a strange dance with the intangible shadow-woman between them on the stone. She danced faster, and faster, shadow hands skipping around them in this tantalising and monstrous sorcery of primal hungers, and his eyes were drawn inexorably lower, eagerly and fearfully, away from the shadow-show and down to the girl controlling it, hair spinning golden and eyes glowing as she placed her feet with delicate precision on the room's puppet strings, and she looked like the heart of a universe.   


His feet wanted to go to her, to twist and leap at her side, to feel the fire lick at his coat and fill his eyes, but he felt certain it would devour him, drag him into the pit and consume him, so he made them stop moving forward, and wondered if this was how the first dog felt before it became such.   


Still the music accelerated, and the dance grew wilder, and the strange calls grew louder, and he wanted it to end and didn't, and wanted to chase it to completion and run from it, until, with a yelping bellow, one of the shadow's companions faltered, and stumbled, and nearly knocked Buffy over.   


The drumming stopped, echoing away into only the beating of his own heart, and he was glad of it and livid for it.   


Buffy wrung her hands together before dropping them to her sides, panting slightly, temples glazed with sweat. She flicked him a glance too swift to read, then stood watching Talky at the big drum for his verdict.   


"You have entertained admirably," he said, smiling. "Sit down, little lion. I shall get your prize." He turned to go, then stopped in surprise.

And standing alone and stupidly exposed bang in the middle of the cavern, Spike froze, wondering how he'd got there.

"What is this?" Talky asked, frowning as though he'd never seen a wolf before. Probably hadn't ever had one walk in, the way he smelt.

Spike stood his ground, weighing up the likelihood of her reward being forgotten if he bolted and they gave chase.

"That’s my dog!" Buffy spat out, standing up with a nervous laugh. "He must have followed me. Sorry, let me just tell him…" She'd rounded the fire pit and strode closer as she spoke, putting herself in the way if anyone thought to try and grab him for dinner. " _ Act like it," _ she hissed at him under her breath.

Too thrown to choose a suitable response, he did, waving the end of his tail at her tentatively and shuffling his front feet.

"Can we eat it?" one of the others asked hopefully.   


"No," Buffy said, her eyes whipping back to them like searing lances.

The speaker pouted sadly.

"Meh," shrugged Talky, and carried on towards a tunnel branching off partway down the cavern. 

  
  
  


She was handed a velvet-wrapped package barely the size of a deck of cards, and warned to be most wary of its contents. Its weight was negligible, and she tucked it carefully into the pocket of her dress, wondering about magic beans and enchanted rings and poisonous stings. Then they asked her to share their meal. Gracious acceptance appearing safer than refusal, and it being a cold and hungry night outside, she agreed.   


Huge chunks of sheep were carved from the spit, and she soon found herself sitting around the fire with the now perfectly affable trolls on a seat they'd swiftly made of a folded fur. Spike hung back, lurking in shadows again, never dipping an ear to fear yet holding himself aloof with a practised casualty, sliding carelessly away when she looked from him to the empty space beside her in invite.  _ Suit yourself _ .   


The almost entire forelimb of one of the sheep was thrust at her on a fork-spear of bone, and she took it gingerly with her best fake smile. At least it looked like ordinary lamb, not roast marshmallow or something even more unexpected. And it smelt divine to her again ravening stomach. Watching the non-table manners being displayed around her, she told herself this was Rome and sunk her teeth into it.

It was  _ damn _ good. Hunger built on exertion probably seasoned it beyond what it really deserved, but right then, she'd have called it the best thing she could remember eating. Smiling more naturally, she told the troll who'd given it to her so and chomped at it again.   


Spike’s gaze was heavy on her back, and after trying and failing to bluntly ignore him for a few minutes she turned her head back to catch his eyes. "You're making me feel bad," she accused lightly, and motioned at the space beside her again.   


With another of those little huffs and a very sardonic look for a wolf to pull off, he padded forward and sat down. With her sitting cross-legged and slouchy he had a height advantage, and shortly the lofty expression to show he was well aware of it.   


"Want some?" she asked, lifting her roast limb. "Assuming you eat-"  _ people food? Dog food? Food that's not people? _ "demon-eyed sheep?"

"Eat whatever tastes good," he said, offhand. "But we're not friends, slayer, so don't try to act like it."

"I know," she said, frowning. Maybe she had let herself imagine he was something close to it, for a little while there while she was dancing; a familiar enemy, someone challenging her to push herself harder to win. But that was neither here nor there now that the battle was over and she was all indolent with success and food and the chance to sit down. "We don't have to be friends for me to want to share," she continued, watching him sidelong. "You looked hungry. I have food. I can't just sit here and eat it in front of you." Her frown had grown by the end, because was that how he thought of her? "I'm not the evil stepmother, take two."

He turned suspicious eyes on her, as though he was refraining on a decision on that one, then twitched the muscles on his shoulder in a shrug, setting it aside. "No, you're a sodding do-gooder. Handover, then."

She tore off a section of muscle for herself and extended the rest to him. He took it carefully with his teeth, then slid down onto his stomach to hold it with his front paws while he tore at it. His teeth were far more effective for the task than her own, shearing off great strips of flesh with ease, but although his paw-hands were surprisingly dexterous at holding the bone in place, bits of sandy dirt were sticking to it where he had to brace it against the ground. She looked away, into the fire, wondering what and where he usually ate and how much choice he'd had in his role.

  
  


Feeling the closest to comfortably content that she had yet since diving into this peculiar world, Buffy gave up trying to lick her fingers free of grease and leaned back on her elbows. The trolls were equally replete, and parts of the conversations she'd listened in to while eating had deepened the sense that their lecherous and violent introduction had been only so many lines they were expected to present to adventurers. Still. It wouldn't be a good idea to let herself drift off complacently.   


Another loud crack of splintering bone drew her eyes back to Spike, his rear legs now casually resting out to the side as he gnawed idly at the end of the ulna that was all that remained of their meal.   


"You done?" she asked lazily, half hoping he'd say  _ no, have a nap while I finish killing this. _   


"Yeah," he sighed, letting the bone drop and licking at his lips. "Full." His jaws stretched in a wide toothy yawn. "Do we really have to be back on time?"

"I'm thinking yes," she said firmly. No accidental sleeping spell of a warm belly was going to steal her success. Lowering her voice she added, "And that we'd be wisest to leave before something changes."

Lifting his eyebrows in agreement, he stood up and did that shaking-his-fur-into-place-thing, then waited for her to lead the way. 

  
  


Returning felt longer, tired as her feet were and dark as the night was, and also shorter, with the minuscule weight of her loot in her pocket and a rough idea of the distance to be travelled. On the open plain Spike hung back, a distant shadow on her heels, mouth finally quiet and tail hanging low behind him under the midnight sky. Once back in the woods, however, she was forced to slow down, watching her step and the vague little path in a darkness murkier than any she was accustomed to, and with a hard-done-by sigh and what may have been a flash of yellow in the starlit reflection of his eyes, Spike took point, white tail lifted higher as a glowing beacon. Eyes tracking the fluffy tip of it, she picked up the pace again, figuring that he probably wasn't leading her towards a secret bear pit or gingerbread house and that if he was she would deal with it then.   


They emerged at the edge of the village again in late morning light, and he took it as his cue to leave, legs stretching out in a long, loping run that carried him swiftly from sight. 


	7. Unveiled

A nervous-eyed young woman in an apron met her as she trudged towards the castle driveway; apparently, Buffy now had a maid. She was shown to a side entrance, through the million twists and turns of hallways, and deposited in her bedroom again with an assurance the woman would be back later to help her dress for the ball.   


Past caring about the pristine lace of the bedcover, Buffy flopped onto it on her back and stared blankly at the ceiling while ten million downy inches of fluffy-cloud blankets floated her on their luxuriousness. She should probably open that package now, find out exactly what it was she was going to hand over. And take off her muddy boots. And filthy dress. Soon. After more ceiling study. Architectural appreciation was important.   


A scrape at the door handle made her lift her head hopefully, then the door was being nudged open by a white-furred muzzle. Of course he would decide to come poking around again as soon as she relaxed. She dropped her head back into cloudville and listened as he invited himself in and somehow closed the door behind him.  _ Why couldn't I have locked that? _   


"What?" she asked grumpily, sitting up. "Haven't you got something better to do? Like sleeping?"

He ignored her, trotting over to a window and standing up with his front paws on the sill to look out curiously.   


"Hey!" she growled. "Get your grubby feet off my windowsill!"

"Oh-ho," he grinned, dripping insouciance as he dropped back to the ground to continue his perusal of her room. "Put the girl in a tower and doesn't she turn straight back into quite the spoilt princess." He sat down on the rug and lifted a hind leg to scratch behind his ear roughly, freeing a sprinkling of white hairs to drift down around him, then thumped it back down and told her, "It's my castle, so deal with it."

_ Your whole castle now, is it?  _ But responding was only encouraging him. She dropped back on her bed again and closed her eyes, listening to him nose about further for what had to be at least a full minute before she had to ask again tiredly, "What do you want?"

"'Bout time we inspected that parcel, ain't it?"

"It's my parcel," she retorted sarcastically. "What's this 'we'?" But she dragged herself back upright to fish it from her pocket.   


The velvet wrapper unfolded to reveal a coil of narrow crimson ribbon, thick and invitingly soft-looking for all its veiny redness.  _ Snow White's… lost hair ribbon?  _ Spike was looking at it as if it made perfect sense, however, so she eyed it from a different angle and ran back through the fairy-tale in her head.

"Thought you'd recognise a weapon when you saw one," Spike tutted before she could get it, shaking his head. "It's the bodice lace."

"From the witch's corset?"

Another scornful snort, but she'd expected as much, and experience thus far said that now she'd get a full answer behind it. "Snow didn't answer the door with her boobs hanging out, blondie. The witch's lacing went in the bodice she already had on. Tight enough for the perfect waist, and if that meant dropping in a dead faint, plenty of idiots in the real world have thought it worth the risk. Once saw a woman topple over and drown in the Seine for all the shyte she was weighed down with to make her bum look just so." He grinned to himself, staring off into fond memory.   


"Hilarious," she said in a voice of frozen concrete.

"What?" he asked, glaring. "I'm not bloody Lassie." He looked back to the ribbon and shrugged with a twitch of his coat. "Not much of a threat to an unbreathing Snow White, anyway." The grin returned and he said through it, "Or I guess to you right now, given you've traded your bodice for it."

She glanced down at her dress, suddenly registering the lack of her forgotten corset and wondering if it meant something.   


"Shit happens all the time around here," Spike offered casually. "Could probably still strangle you with this, mind, if you want a hand to try it on?" His gaze swept up to her throat, becoming sharp and hungry on a dime.

"You'd hardly be my first choice for a  _ hand _ with anything," she snapped.   


Chuckling low in his throat, he slunk back to the door and opened it with a hook of his paw, then vanished through to leave her staring at the hallway beyond. 

  
  


She considered sleeping away the afternoon, before deciding it would only leave her muzzy and more tired for the ball. The pattern could be reasonably expected to hold - present yourself at dawn, be assigned task - so she could take care of the sleeping thing after handing over her token. Instead, she lay on the plush-cloud bed and thought through everything she had learnt.   


Were woodcutters like slayers? Taken one away and the next one rises? And did it even matter? This wasn't her world; the people here didn't seem entirely real, somehow, and were surely outside her jurisdiction. And if it was partly her fault that an insane vampire was here to prey on them, it was also true that they seemed happy with the arrangement. It would be so easy to tell herself she could take Angel and go and nothing would change for them. Easy to say, and too thin a cover to ever let her feel entirely comfortable with her actions.   


She jerked awake from an almost-doze to a quiet knock on her door, and shook her head to clear it as she stood up.   


"Hello?" she asked of the now barred door, sliding her troll-bloodied stake into her palm.   


"Buffy," Angel answered, rich-chocolate warm and glad. "It's me."

Tension melted out of her, and she shoved the drop bar up to let him in with a smile. "Hey."   


"Hell...lo?" he said questioningly, frowning at her state of attire.   


"Oh." She felt a blush creeping, and tried to smooth out a wrinkle in her filthy dress. "Long day. And night, and day. How did you get on?"   


He shook his head morosely and sat down on the edge of her bed, face dropping to study his hands. "Not well. She won't budge on excusing you from the challenges."

"Well, one's down." She pulled out the folded parcel and waved it. "And I have no intention of being excused."

"Do you really think you could win against her?" he asked, lifting eyes full of a wistful and faint hope to her face.

"I can, and I will," she said firmly. Her certainty ran out there, leaving her next words shaky, "Do you want me to?"

"Yes," he said quickly, rising to stand in front of her and taking her hands. "I'm sorry, Buffy. I'd all but given up on ever escaping this place. I didn't think I was meant to, that I could deserve… but now you've come for me. So yes, oh yes. If there's an ending where we leave together… I want that. Of course I do."   


His hands were cool on her skin, nostalgic in the way they folded hers firmly inside them like something precious, or perhaps a lifeline. A handful of memories filtered up from the ether with them; tender kisses and quiet touches, longing and dreaming and some great, aching tug in her chest. Memories seen through thicker glass than a mirror was made of; scenes of a comfort film for lonely nights. And she looked up at this very real man staring down at her as though he'd suddenly glimpsed his salvation again in her touch, and suddenly felt very young, and very stupid, and very alone, because he wasn't really looking at her at all, and she didn’t know him any better.   


She swallowed down a lump in her throat, exhaustion surging back to try and open the floodgates on this wave of disappointing disenchantment.  _ Get a grip.  _ He was a good man. She would fight for him. And to make up for her failure that had seen him brought here and caged. Whether there was anything to be found between them… well, they could figure that out back in Sunnydale. It didn't really matter right now.   


"I want that too," she told him through a watery smile, then gently slid her hands free to begin pacing the room. Moving was good. Moving kept emotions in check, made it easier to form plans.   


"What will happen to the people here when you leave?" she asked. "Spike told me you protect them from Drusilla at the balls and things."

Angel shifted his shoulders in a gesture that wasn't quite a shrug, then sat down again. "I don't know. A new woodcutter might appear. Or a magic dove, or a fairy godmother… something will work out." He didn't look entirely confident about it. "Besides, I can help a lot more people with you.  _ Real _ people. There's only so much I can do here before Snow White has me running circles in her stupid games again… It's been difficult, to know what's right here. Everything's so backwards." He shuddered, and an echo of that old pang went through her, placeable now as an urge to comfort and help however she could.   


She rested a hand on his shoulder, feeling out her reactions cautiously, feeling like a stranger in her own story of her life. The contact felt right for now; supportive, but not restrictive. For either of them. "We'll get through this," she murmured, pulling the phrase from some pocket playbook;  _ generic encouraging sayings.   
_

"I hope so," he mumbled, then heaved himself up and glanced over her dress again. "I'll let you get cleaned up," he said apologetically, and headed towards the door. When he'd opened it without another word from her he looked back, a slight perplexity drawing down his brow.

_ Did I really used to be that girl? The one who would have clung to you over a doorway and over-apologised for mud?  _ She didn't know how to do it anymore; where those impulses had drained away to. Perhaps she'd been wrong: this feeling was not that she  _ was _ young but that she  _ had once been  _ very young, and had now existed too long for one of her kind. Or perhaps she'd just had a long and tiring few days. "I'll see you at the ball," she said gently.   


When he was gone she wandered over to one of the west side windows and unhooked the latches to throw it open. Leaning on the sill to watch the sun sink towards the horizon, the words to a half-remembered song lilted softly from her lips, _ "There was a time when love was blind… and the world was a song…" _ Which, apparently it literally was, because she was still singing, and only growing louder, and the sky was swelling with sunset colours like someone was painting it as her backdrop, and a sourceless breeze was blowing from her bedroom to sweep her hair out artistically like she was on a fashion shoot, and she hadn't forgotten any of the words, even though she was sure she'd never known more than parts of the first verse " _...He took my childhood in his stride… But he was gone when autumn came…"  _ and she maybe wanted to take issue with some lines and this whole charade, except the song was almost finished anyway, and god she hoped no one was watching and that Angel had sprinted to some urgent business at the opposite end of the castle  _ "...I had a dream my life would be… So different from this hell I'm living… So different now from what it seemed… Now life has killed the dream…" _ She leant out the window at the end, an arm extended dramatically at the sky as she drew out the last word  _ " _ ... _ I dreamed." _

"What the hell was _that?"_ she asked herself, relieved as her voice came out in a familiar irritated hiss. Leaning out further, she quickly scanned the courtyard and gardens below for any sign of an unwelcome audience.   


And was somehow completely unsurprised to find a wolf standing halfway across the yard as though he'd been glued in place on his way past, one forefoot still lifted in the air. When her eyes landed on him, his mouth dropped open in a burst of mocking laughter.   


"What the fuck are you looking at?" she shouted down at him, then jumped back and slammed the window shut.   


She was no blasted Fantine. Time to stop moaning about in a stained dress and get on with the mission. 

  
  
  


Spike stretched out on the daybed and watched Dru costume herself for the evening; rouge spots to her cheeks, a red bow on her head.   


"Don't get too Disney," he sneered at the bow. "Could do without the big group sing-along this week."

She ignored him, as he'd expected her to, checking the precise curl of her hair with her fingers and drawing on glistening candy-red lipstick. Wasn't sure why he was here at all, really; only that everything had felt unsettled and loose since that bloody slayer had first stepped into the castle, and that defending his role to her had reminded him of what he had once imagined it to be. There was no security in all his aimless wandering of late.

And none in watching Snow White dress up.  _ Do you even remember who I am anymore? _ If she'd made any connection between his howling and the slayer's arrival, she'd given no sign of it, and far from the days when that would have meant a surprise punishment to come just when he dropped his guard, it felt more likely that she simply didn't care enough to bother.

A pageboy stepped forward with her crown, and Dru-Snow settled it carefully under the bow before patting the boy's head in dismissal.   


_ Do you remember who  _ _ you _ _ were? _ Was it right to lose yourself if you were happier being someone else, somewhere else? His credo said yes, but still he mourned the exquisite princess of malevolence who would have turned that pat into a gouging and who the world that had never understood now seemed to have gladly forgot. He had tried to learn to love the new turn in her smile, the quiet lucidity of her nights, but those smiles and that small talk were not made for he, and cold apathy was all he could muster for this creature who had replaced the one he had loved so long. And Dru herself had already turned her back on him well before picking up this crown.

_ I dreamed that love would never die…   
_

He leapt down from the couch and shook his coat out, refusing to let the tug of this damn place pull him into some sick reprise of the slayer's little solo. Danger averted, he grinned to himself at the memory of it again. Uptight little miss was bound to be spitting knives over it, and she was too fun to pick at with a fire ready under her arse.

"Where  _ is _ the woodcutter?" Dru asked the doorman impatiently. "I had ordered him to accompany me this eve."   


A search was about to be sent out when the wanker in question came hurrying in, cowed apology in his mien. Now this was interesting. Spike lay down again, removing himself from notice to observe. Someone had obviously been reminded once again that they  _ owed _ Dru all they could offer in amends, and if there was one part of Dru that had never faded in this merged creature she had become, it was the way she routinely dredged Angel up for a fun spot of mental torture. Prompted this latest time, no doubt, by the threat of the slayer stealing him away. A wolf could almost get to feeling jealous, except that there was no affection in it anymore. She kept the knives in and gave them these occasional twists out of some impersonal sense of duty, voices of long-dead sisters whispering to her that this was how she should pay her respects, and when words of guilt and shame bled from the wounds, they were only more of the love she was showered with from every angle, overflowing across the floor in their unneeded excess.

Interesting right now though, because Angel also had the cagey look of a man plotting to flee his just rewards, but hadn't the slayer just sung about being over the bastard?  _ Curiouser and curiouser, these wicked webs we weave… _ Be funny if she changed her mind and buggered off without him right when he realised a rescue would be welcome after all. Possibly even worth letting her leave in one piece for. 

  
  
  


The dress had done its magic again, if with a few straying flicks of hair on her head. Anyway, she was clean and presentable and ready to present herself and her prize, her second (or third) wind kicking in to lift her heels and straighten her spine. Everything always looked more promising in a gorgeous outfit.   


The same maid appeared, looked pleased to find her ready, and led her on a new route through the maze of castle to the front entrance. The ballroom was just as beautiful, the guests just as glittering, the gardens and hall and tables just as wonderfully displayed. Did they really do this several times a week, forever? She shook her head at the impossible scene and reminded herself she'd decided to enjoy it as wholeheartedly as she could while the opportunity was here. As working holidays went… well, there were worse ones.   


At  _ queen Snow White's  _ pretentious entry Buffy rolled her eyes and bent her waist in a lightly given and showy bow that said,  _ I can play your little game without any effort whatsoever.  _ Then she moved up to the petitioner's scrap of floor, and handed over her parcel. To Angel, who seemed to have been roped into waiting on Drusilla, his posture all slumpy and his eyes big pools of  _ please rescue me. _ She gave him a smile that she hoped broadcast the confidence she felt in doing exactly that.   


"How," Drusilla asked, curling the lace idly around her fingers, "did you ever convince the trolls to give it to you?" Her cold eyes stared down with all the indecipherable reserve of a sitting cat.

"I… danced," Buffy said, a twinge of embarrassment trying to shrink her voice, because really, what the hell had she been thinking? A firelit cave and a crazy flash of inspiration to get her heels out of it seemed a million miles away from this primly ordered and garish ballroom. But she'd done it. And done it well. She hardened her own eyes and told Drusilla, "They wanted entertainment. I danced for them. They gave that to me in return."

"How like a common whore," Drusilla said. "Perhaps you have more in common with your predecessor than I suspected."

Buffy felt her cheeks heat, and swiftly ran through the idea of jumping up there and staking her highness and anyone else that got themselves involved. However, none of the possible outcomes from such an act seemed very helpful to her cause (unless she was willing to claim the crown herself, which, no thanks) so she wrestled the urge back down to smoulder for later. At least Spike was keeping his mouth shut for once, loitering in the shadows by the door again.   


"Very well. See you at dawn," Drusilla said, dismissing Buffy and turning her head to speak to Angel.   


Buffy stalked stiff-legged towards the far end of the room, then changed her mind and kept going until she was outside on the balcony-thing behind it. It was almost as crowded as the inside had been, full of couples smiling shyly in their own little corners, single women fanning themselves in artful poses like so many jewels on display for the men appraising them in polite little groups. Lacking a fan, Buffy squeezed into a corner of the railing beside a potted tree and tried to vanish there while she took deep breaths of the crisp evening air. She felt childishly overwrought and extremely silly for it, but everything was just so off-kilter from what she had imagined for so long that it was all beginning to seem hideously unfair. Which, you know, she should have known to expect. Running theme of her life, etc, and she should never have let herself indulge the fantasy that a world of fairy-tales would be any different. Hell, the crowd out here was even remarkably similar to the edge of the dance floor at the Bronze, costumes aside. Except that she didn’t have a table of friends nearby to return to.  _ Yes, I do.  _ They might have something to say about her spur-of-the-moment vanishing act, and Giles would pull his worried-disapproval face, and Xander was definitely going to have something a little too painful to say about the whole coming to her senses on the love of her life thing, but then they'd brush it aside and welcome her home. And they weren't really so far away. Kendra or no, if she took too long at this the witches were sure to send out a message of some kind.

"Coin for your thoughts?" a smoothly charming voice asked, and the man himself rested one elbow against the railing beside her, his cheek dropping into his palm as he smiled up at her.   


"Not a penny?" she asked, her voice flat.  _ Not in the mood, buddy. _

"What's a penny?" he asked curiously. "You must tell me more about where you come from, my lady. I imagine they have all wonder of marvellously beautiful things there, if you are any indication."

As openings went she hadn't given him much, but he hardly seemed the least dissuaded. And she supposed she had rather rudely ditched him last night. "The price of my thoughts," she told him, more warmly. "So it looks like you're out of luck."

"And alas, being trinketless, I find myself also woefully ill-financed to purchase the pleasure of a dance with you, while concurrently much too far below your station to expect one in return for the pleasure of my own meagre company." He clutched his chest in mock despair. "Take pity on a poor second son -  _ who is first in line to inherit - _ and grant him one in blessed charity, or all his evening’s careful dressing shall be for naught."

"You… want to dance with me?" she asked, to be certain.

"Yes." He smiled up at her hopefully, all storybook-perfect and smoothly respectful.   


_ And here I was planning on a quiet sulk. _ This was a much better idea. She needed to stop wallowing over lost dreams and have fun, like she'd told herself she would. The opinions of an insane bloodsucker must not dampen one's night. "That would be most welcome," she told him. 

  
  


They danced, and she remembered the steps from last time, and when she proved less than talkative, he filled the gaps for her, regaling her with bits of gossip pertaining to other characters around the room. He did not mention the woodcutter, and she didn’t either, relieved to find both him and the queen absent from the stage again. Her world-tilting realisation earlier now felt fuzzy and confusing, all muddled together with the whole lack of sleep and constant alertness and missing facts, and she was very glad she hadn't tried to discuss it with Angel himself. Charming was evoking a similar degree of uninterest from her affections, and finally she begged off, pointing to her long day in explanation, feeling like she was making him waste his time on this increasingly futile mission to make her have fun.   


He offered to escort her to her rooms, but didn't push the issue when she declined, and wished her luck for the morning. She told him to find someone more permanent to direct his charms towards, because, her? Not the rewarding conquest he deserved. Then she left the music and the bright chandeliers, and tried to guess her way to her tower.   


Somewhere near the corridor where she'd taken her shoes off the other night, the tears started, prickling hot pins and needles that sat in her eyes without falling; she ignored them.  _ Guess I only delayed that sulk. _   


At the next T-intersection of identical hallways she was forced to stop, glaring sullenly down each through swimming eyes.  _ Stupid castle.   
_

"You look like a sodding waterfall,"  _ somebody  _ opined behind her, his voice a reedy jeer.

"No one asked you," she growled, then turned around. "What do you think you are, my own personal court jester with a nasty streak?"

Standing at the far end of the hall, he stared up at her in surprise, swiftly followed by confusion, then dropped his eyes quickly to the floor and licked his lips, as if embarrassed and uncomfortable.   


_ Huh. Point to me, I guess.  _ She turned back to the decision in front of her, weighed each option against her vague memory, and chose left.   


Halfway down the next corridor he came slinking up behind her, then veered close to the wall to slide past without coming into reach. "I meant the dress," he muttered in passing. "How it's all blue and shit." He trotted ahead to a door near the end, pawed it open, then looked back at her. "You're lost," he said bluntly. "We can cut through here."

A big, grumpy part of her wanted to tell him to piss off. A more sensible part brought up the fact that she had been beginning to consider the possibility that she was maybe a little bit lost, and that she really wanted to get back to her room and close the door on everything as soon as possible. She followed him, broadcasting her anger with silence. 

  
  


Spike took the quickest route, having ditched his earlier plan to watch her get utterly lost and be forced to ask for help, and having been deeply disturbed by his first reaction to the sheen of tears in her eyes. He should have been thrilled to find her so off her game. He should have jumped on the weak spot in glee. He should  _ not  _ have felt bad for inadvertently picking on it. And he  _ definitely  _ should not have wanted to apologise and fucking comfort her. Slayer was dangerous, more so than he'd remembered to keep in mind; confusing and confounding and making him feel things he had no place feeling. If she didn’t get herself killed tomorrow he was damn well going to tell her to go home.

He delivered her to her door, and when she offered a quiet, "Thank you," he growled warningly in response. She looked at him curiously, but said no more, and closed the door softly before locking it. Curling up against the hallway wall with his tail over his nose, he told himself to stop bloody thinking and go to sleep. 


	8. Morning

Her fears of sleeping in proved unfounded, a cold chill seeping into the room to wake her long before dawn. For a long time she huddled in a ball under the blankets, trying to convince herself she was warm enough, knowing she would be anything but if she got up. Finally, the insufficiency of the doing-nothing approach drove her from bed, and she dressed quickly in a thick, heavy dress before wrapping one of the spare blankets on as a robe. Frost decorated the little diamond panes of glass in her windows, and the door handle felt like ice under her hand. Winter was growing.   


Spike’s blue eyes watched her over the fluffy bush of his tail from across the hallway, where he looked like he'd been all night.  _ Don't you have somewhere warmer to be? _ She was beginning to suspect that he really didn't, or not where he was wanted, so she refrained from asking. Maybe he was warm enough with his furry coat, scruffy and shortish though it was. Maybe he wasn't a living wolf at all, but some kind of undead one that didn't feel the cold. Though the way he was all tightly curled up contradicted that idea. Maybe he really did think she needed constant supervision to stop some devious plan to sabotage the queen. She hoped so. The sleep might have soothed her frazzled emotions of last night, but she still didn't feel her best ass-kicky self. Just cold, and kinda hungry, and slightly at sea.   


Pulling her blanket tighter around her, she asked him, "Is there somewhere warmer downstairs? And food?" All that stuff at the balls had to come from somewhere. Unless it was magicked into existence.   


"Yeah." Uncurling with a long stretch of his legs, he climbed to his feet and shook his coat like any genuine canine would.   


"What does it feel like?" she asked curiously as they started walking, hoping it wouldn't throw him into a bad mood of some kind. It was too early to fight. "Having fur, and a tail, and stuff."

He looked over at her suspiciously for a few steps, then seemed to decide the question was genuine. "Strange," he said, then shrugged. "Not so much as it was, mind." He watched his front feet, tail drooping as he pondered them; she wondered if he felt it do so; how much conscious control he exerted over it.   


"Can run faster," he added. "Farther. Bite harder." He smirked up at her, but the expression looked forced.   


"Plus, not stuck saying someone else's lines this time," she said, arching an eyebrow at him and hoping nothing pitying showed through on her face. "Don't even  _ try _ to suggest I start picking flowers."   


He chuckled. "Maybe that'll be the next task. A nice little bouquet for your Félix."

"My who?"

This time his amusement was genuine. "Unworthy sod you were singing so passionately about. Forgotten his name already? Or do you only know him by that far less fitting one?"

"I didn't think I even knew the words to the song," she protested.

He chuckled, though not unkindly. "Happens all the time. We call it The Walter Effect."

"I don't recall any Disney animated classic of the French Revolution, either."

"No, but you knew a line or two of a song. That's all it takes. So watch out for anyone bursting with a full-cast number, because the novelty wears off  _ very _ fast." He shook his head in playful disgust, and she smirked to herself at the experience obviously behind his voice.

The air was growing warmer the deeper into the castle they moved, and she yawned comfortably as her muscles relaxed into it after their frigid start. Several more closed doors and two sets of stairs later, Spike slowed his feet and pressed closer to the wall as they approached a doorway in one side of it. After peering around the edge with his ears pinned back, he slunk inside in a quick, low dash. Mimicking his sneaky silence, she ducked down and peered around the doorway after him.

The room was a huge underground kitchen, hot with three huge ovens and bustling with activity in the pre-dawn candlelight. Half a dozen people were moving about, pulling trays of warm bread from the ovens, sliding in new ones, spooning filling into pie tins and washing dishes. Spike stood behind a tall workbench, out of sight of the staff, and she widened her eyes at him to say,  _ what are we doing?   
_

"Get over here," he shot back in a whisper, ears swivelling to track sounds from nearer the ovens.   


_ Not an answer, but… _ Staying low, she checked the coast was clear and then scurried over to join him. "Why are we hiding?" she whispered.  _ God does it smell good in here. _ Fresh bread and toasty oatyness and honey… had she not been hungry already, she would still have been starving as soon as she stepped inside.   


"No guests allowed in the kitchen. And certainly no dogs. You can wait and hope you're invited to the banquet hall for brunch later, or you can nick us something while I distract them." He cocked his head at her, taunting eyes gleaming as he presumably waited for her law-abidingness to battle her stomach.   


"Okay," she said breezily. It was hardly the crime of the century. And it would be on his head.

"Oh," he said, surprised. Brightening and turning his attention to the room beyond their hiding spot, he said cheerfully, "Okay then. Meet me on that last stairwell." Then he slunk across to the far side of the room, leapt up onto a bench, and grabbed something in his jaws.

A chorus of shouts went up, and everyone dropped what they were doing to grab the nearest kitchen implement and brandish it at him in a fury. Feet almost skipping, he ran the length of the bench before leaping to the floor and towards another door, something meaty dangling out of either side of his mouth and muffling the sound of his laughter. Utensils and cries of  _ you bastard cur! _ flew after him, and someone squealed after being thwacked with their colleague's spoon.

Moving swift and low, Buffy grabbed the nearest pie tin, tossed some bread on top, and ducked back out of the door behind her before anyone had turned around.   


Spike was waiting on the stairway, tail sweeping lightly from side to side and something rabbit-sized still dangling from his jaws. He waited for her to catch up, then led the way through another bunch of dizzying turns to some sort of small storage room. The windows high in one wall were still dark, so when Spike turned in a circle and lay down on a pile of fabric, she doubled back to the hallway for one of the candles that had lit it, standing it in its holder on a clear patch of floor before closing the door behind them.   


Spike crunched his way disgustingly through whatever poor creature he had, while she looked over the options and chose a seat on a big beanbag-ey canvas sack.   


"What are we doing?" she asked, resting the warm pie plate on her lap. It was full of something lattice-topped and smelling alluringly of cinnamon and pipfruit, but a delayed sense of propriety had her hesitating. Plus, no fork.

"Eating breakfast," he said, laughter still in his voice. "Bit late to change your mind." He picked up the last chunk of whatever it was, crunched it twice, and gulped it down. Then nodded at her lap. "What'd you get?"   


Turning away from his repulsive eating habits, she moved the loaves of bread over on her lap and picked a corner of pastry off. "Pie." It was buttery and sweet on her tongue, one edge syrupy with some sort of honey-pear filling. " _ Delicious _ pie."   


Spike licked his muzzle clean, watching her expectantly.   


"Don't be a scab," she told him, frowning as she picked up another piece.

"You wouldn't be eating any of that if I hadn't shown you how it was done," he snarked back bitterly.

"Like I need your help to steal pie," she retorted, because he wasn't her friend, he'd made that abundantly clear, and she needed to remember it and not start thinking he would be any kind of help beyond what was self-serving. But his instant switch to bitter pessimism stung; she was obviously still the evil greedy stepmother to him. "You'll get your raw-meat-germs all over it," she added. "Just wait, I'll save you some."

He watched her with steady, unreadable eyes for a moment, then jumped up and began sniffing around the room in bored exploration. "So what happened with Félix?" he asked idly, pawing open a cupboard and sticking his head inside as if he didn't really care what the answer was.

"That’s not his name," she said, and filled her mouth with pie, because this was not a subject she was going to get into with  _ him _ .

"Angel, then." He pulled his head back out and looked over at her. "Fallen from his imagined grace because his fealty ain't the only thing that lies with the queen?"

His eyes were cutting as he said the words, but his ears were pinned back again. She'd never had a dog; never studied the details of canine language beyond: wagging tail = probably friendly. But he looked like any human or demon on the defensive, tucking its vulnerable bits closer while it lashed out with a sound and a hard glare. A moment later his head was disappearing into the cupboard again, forcing her thoughts away from the grab for a distraction and onto the meaning of his words.

She said nothing, picking at bits of pie that had suddenly become tart and unappealing. It shouldn't make a difference whether Angel was… being intimate with Drusilla. He'd obviously had to make the best of the situation he found himself in, and if that meant playing nice to the enemy… especially if 'the enemy' was being less with the evil and confusingly beneficial to this place… And Buffy had already realised her folly in thinking they could pick up right where they had left off. So it shouldn't matter. And he still wanted to escape, so an ever-after with Drusilla couldn't be something he wanted.   


"How long is it until sunrise?" she asked, putting the bread down on a nearby shelf to stand up and brush the crumbs from her dress.

Spike backed out of the cupboard and sat down facing her. "Half an hour… More of a headstart than you'll get if she tasks you with something to do on the spot." He watched her closely with hunter's eyes, wary in expectation that she might decide to flee.

She put the pie tin down on her makeshift seat. "Here. Then you'd better point me to the ballroom."

"I haven't said I'll stop you," he said, looking puzzled, though whether at her or himself she couldn’t decide. "If you want to use your brain and run."

"I'm not backing out," she snapped at him, feeling attacked on all sides with that suggestion. "Are you so enamoured of Angel that you'd like me to, or are you just afraid to face up to the fact that Dru still won't want you once I succeed?" She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but not soon enough to stop them. Besides, he'd started it.

Any warmth about him vanished in an instant, and the blue-grey of his eyes shifted to a hard, inhuman yellow that marked him as the vampire-in-wolves-clothing he was. "No," he said, his voice low and full of menace, "I'm just looking forward to killing you when you finally realise how stupid you've been to come here."

The hairs on the back of her neck were prickling up in response, and she knew her posture had shifted into something more fight-ready to match his. It felt right, in a way that nothing else in this world had; preparation for a clearcut and honest throw down between two natural opponents. Except that one of them now had fur. And hadn't asked for this. And that she had an entirely other type of battle to get to. "Won't happen," she told him, equally low. Then she moved to the door, watching him all the way. "I'll find my own way there."

  
  
  


Spike glared at the door long after she'd gone, then grabbed the nearest wall hanging in his teeth and tore it to the floor, where he ripped it asunder in a burst of snarling growls. Then he shook the crawl left by his sudden fury out of his coat, gruffed a bark of crazed laughter, and ate the pie she'd left behind. Wasn't sure who he'd been maddest at; her, for picking on exactly how miserable two out of three possibilities were for him in her little game (and the third ill but a brief reprieve, because once he'd got over the thrill of killing her, he'd still be stuck here playing underdog to Angel), or himself, for letting her opinion get to him. Perhaps he was just mad. Had to be. Stark, barking, mad. Because, right now? He felt like the last three day's nightmare of her had coalesced to jolt him awake.   


He licked sticky fruit syrup from the fur of his muzzle, and it seemed hilarious that he could do so. His tongue was  _ so long.  _ His feet were such  _ paws. _ He laughed again, a maniacal cackle that almost spooked him and yet seemed entirely appropriate, for how else should one respond to the realisation that they'd been drifting through fairy-tale land in a steadily sinking doze for  _ two fucking years _ and were a bleeding  _ vampire  _ in the body of a… a canine of some description?   


_ Forgot to stay sane inside insanity- Fuck. _ He opened the door ( _ paws! _ ) and ran, away from the grab of the song, away from that strange laugh-sound, running down empty hallways with no destination in mind, and in the back of his mind, a passing thought that maybe Dru had got her book out again, for perhaps one of them had to lose the plot and now it was his turn, but uncaring if this was so, because he felt giddy with aliveness and dizzy clarity.   


An open door brought him outside, and he stopped there to stand panting his steaming breath into the frosty pre-dawn air.  _ Christ. How the hell did you end up here, you sorry fucker? _   


The sense of insane freedom faded slowly as he caught his breath, reality settling in, butting into place around this buzz in his veins.  _ I dreamt I saw a slayer made of fire dancing with her shadow, and now I am wide awake. _ She had two more tasks, at most, then something was going to change, in one way or another, permanently or otherwise. The End of her story here. Well, he definitely wasn't going to miss it.

Lurking in the foyer behind the throne let him overhear Snow White's latest edict - visit faeries, obtain golden pins, be back the day after tomorrow - and the icy sliver of bloodlust in her voice that warmed him with its echo of Dru. Buffy answered it with cool professionalism and a few questions, and the woodcutter was nary but a silent looming presence on his more-than-canine senses.   


She took her time, this time around, tracking down the clothes she'd arrived in, looping back to the storage room and adding the illicit bread to her bag, rummaging around in there until she found a warm cloak and rust-edged sword. Must have caught on; no one was going to help her, but neither were the staff keen to interact closely enough to stop her helping herself to forgotten junk.

He trailed her north from the castle, past farmhouses and paddocks, frog ponds and orchards. She must have known he was there, for she never looked behind her until she reached the top of a high, grassy hill that would hide the castle from view on its downslope, and then it was to study the building far behind her. He stopped in the road, watching her, and eventually her gaze trickled reluctantly down to him.

"I'm sorry," she said, her soft voice carrying cleanly in the still-crisp air. She looked mightily uncomfortable with the words; apologising to vampires probably wasn't her favourite activity. "I shouldn't have said what I did." Ah, no, he'd read that wrong. She was uncomfortable with herself, daft bint.

"Why not?" he asked bluntly, trotting up to join her. "'S only the truth. Our love lives are miserable dramedies. Though there might be some hope left for yours, way those puppy-dog eyes were begging from you last night."

"Think I'm with you on the suckage," she mumbled, shaking her head. "I hardly knew him, did I? Or if I did, I've changed too much to remember." She blew out a frustrated breath, eyes on the road ahead. "Anyway, he needs rescuing from the queen’s evil clutches, not… whatever it is I wanted."

"A big, strong man to take all the world's problems off your pretty little head?" he teased.

"No!" She was smiling, though, beneath the affront.   


"A damsel in distress for you to save with true love's kiss?"

"No," she said again, less amused. "And why am I even discussing this with you?"

"'Cause I'm here," he shrugged. "So tell me, if  _ Angel's  _ lost the shine on his halo, why are you still? Here?"

"To rescue him." That slightly puzzled frown was back, the one that tried to suggest he wasn't understanding when it was her reasoning that defied more than common sense.   


"Why? He's not one of your innocent charges, by any stretch. And you're obviously not in love with him."

"Whether I am or not is both irrelevant and none of your business. He's a good man-"

His snort cut her off. "He is  _ neither _ of those things."

Oh, now she was glaring at him. He wondered how far he could push her before she'd lash out again, and how exciting it would be when she did.

“He. Is. A. Good. Man,” she repeated flatly. “Not someone’s plaything. He deserves to be free.”

“So let him free himself. Don’t see why you’re so insistent on doing it for him.”

“It’s my duty.”

“No, your  _ duty _ is to slay vampires. Save people, protect the world from evil, all of that rot. Dunno if you’ve noticed, pet, but this ain’t your world, and he ain’t people.”

“He has a soul,” she growled. “Ergo, people. And he belongs  _ in _ my world. Protecting it from evil.” She turned her face away to the path ahead, chin lifted stiffly.  _ Debate over. _

“Why are you really here? Haven't seen any sign of the rest of your little gang of do-gooders, and it hardly seems responsible to leave a hellmouth unguarded blindly. You get fired by the new girl, or are you the only one left and about ready to quit the whole shebang?"   


"Yes, Mr slayer-of-slayers, I got fired," she said sarcastically. "So stop trying to taunt me into a fight, because I won't add to your score."   


"Wasn't." Okay, a little. But her position here was a puzzle he hadn't finished unpacking.   


"Yes, you were. You're just… contrary for the sake of being contrary! If I told you I'd changed my mind and was on my way home, you'd start trying to guilt-trip me into saving Angel, wouldn't you? Do you even know what you want?" She stopped in place and turned to face him, one of her hands waving in exasperation.   


"Did you really get fired?" he asked, tilting his head. Wouldn't have thought it possible for her to do so and escape with her life, but maybe things were different with a second girl in the game.   


"What?" The hand went down. "No. Of course not." Spinning on her heel to start walking again, she added with a shrug, "But Giles did."

"Yeah?" God, what had happened in the world in two years? Likely nothing of any real interest, but if it had, he'd entirely missed watching it unfold. "How'd he manage that? Wasn't all those books I stole, was it?"   


"No." She smothered back a smile, hostility fading. "He cheated on my Cruciamentum. Broke ranks to tell me what was going on after the vampire they'd captured escaped and kidnapped my mom." The smile faded too, some distant hurt crossing her face.

"And how'd that work out for the vampire?" He kept his voice carefully neutral, uncertain of what he was standing on here.

Another smile tugged at her lips, relaxing him. "Not too prettily. I duped him into drinking holy water. It didn’t go down well."

He chuckled, low in his throat, and dipped an ear down flat in lieu of rubbing the side of his head. "Don't imagine he'd have found your mum quite the easy target he was expecting, either." Ah, here was that smile she'd been refusing to let show.   


"No," she grinned, before it vanished again. "Of course, that was when she found out vampires were real and I was the sacred chosen slayer of them, so it probably would have made my week a lot easier to just let her be eaten." She spoke flippantly, but couldn't hide the hurt still loitering nearby.   


He found he didn't want to dig at it. "So what else have I missed?"

After a sharp, suspicious look of appraisal, she told him, "My 'gang of do-gooders' are all well, thank you for asking. The mayor turned into a giant snake… Kendra's visiting, guarding the hellmouth for me while I'm here." Her eyes slid away and she bit her lip guiltily.   


"Kendra what was at the church with you?"

"One and only."

Huh. Would've put good filched money on her biting it well before this one. "So what does she do when she's not playing relief guardian?"

"Why?" Buffy asked, hard in her suspicion now. Protective.   


He kept himself loose and open, tail swinging gently with his steps. "Thought she'd watch it full time, is all. Not the sort to share your crown of thorns though, are you? And feeling all guilt-stricken now for letting her try it on for a week when it should be her everyday."  _ Hit _ . Those sharp eyes veiled themselves and shot away again. Fuck but she took herself too seriously, trying to save a world's bleeding idiots from their own stupid problems and to hell with what it cost her. She'd been so… hopeful, back in Sunnydale. Optimistic. Like she was fighting for  _ her _ happy future too. The sense of weary acceptance with which she'd agreed to each part of the shitty hand she'd been dealt here rankled at him in its bitter familiarity, so perhaps it wasn't so unusual that he should feel a niggle of sympathy for her.

The dreary mood threatened to stretch out down the empty road ahead, and there was a long way to go before they'd reach their destination. "Don't suppose you follow the footy?"   


"The… what?" she asked.

_ Bleeding Americans.  _ "Football. Soccer. Who won the world cup?"

"You want to know who won the soccer world cup?" she asked, eyes wide with confusion.   


"What I said, wasn't it?"

"The big bad vampire wolf watches  _ sports?" _

"For fuck's sake, don't have to look so dumbstruck, slayer. I don't spend  _ all _ my time plotting up mayhem. So yeah, I catch the odd game. Or, did, I guess. Anyway, you know who won the last one or not?"   


She pursed her lips on any more disbelieving questions, then furrowed her brow as she thought about it. "It might have been France? Or was it  _ in _ France? Brazil maybe. Sorry, I've never watched it."

He shook his head in disgust. "Need a bloody education on the funner things in life, you do. Bet that's just the tip of the sodding iceberg. Mayor, then. Giant snake? Tell me that one, because it's all the same recycled tales around this dump."

  
  



	9. Task the Second

She told him about the giant snake and blowing up the high school; about how a pre-warned Kendra had taken a handgun to her Cruciamentum. The return of Ethan and the freaking disturbing drag race between Giles, Jenny, and her mother (mom won). The hellhounds who had tried to crash the prom, Y2K meltdown fears, attempts to open the hellmouth, Dracula's touring castle.   


He snickered appreciatively at the downfall of various villains, and though the laughter was perhaps louder when she was lulled into sharing a couple of her less than shining moments, there was no sting in it, only a sense that he knew  _ exactly  _ how it felt to have everything magically fall apart at the worst possible moment. He was again making it far too easy to forget what he was, trotting along beside her on a clear sunshiny day, complimenting her for an achievement here and there that, yeah, were pretty damn awesome when she thought about it. Then he'd cock his head at her in a genuinely bemused way, and ask or say something that slapped her in the face with it anew.  _ Why bother saving them? Got themselves into it, didn’t they?  _ Or,  _ I remember this time…   
_

"So, faeries?" she asked eventually, ready for a reprieve from the confusing dichotomy that was Spike. "Fill me in."

He arched an eyebrow at her, one ear moving with it; the next time he tried to piss her off she was so going to call him cute. "Not your sodding watcher," he grumbled.   


"You're here," she threw back at him with a smirk. "Watching me. So spill."

He rolled his eyes, but did. "This lot, in the woods, are real small. Like malicious hummingbirds. Don't like intruders. They don't play fair, but they'll be quick to throw a curse at you if you try to treat them the same way." He stared into the distance ahead, pondering, then added casually, "Think she's hoping they'll knock you off, or put you to sleep in the woods for a hundred years."

"Yeah, haven't got a spare century to spend here. How do I deal with them? Exchanging gifts and good manners?" She had, uh… some stolen bread. And the cloak she'd taken off when it got warmer. And a borrowed sword.

"Could try, I guess," he said, sounding rather sceptical.   


"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she said dryly.   


He flopped his ears forwards and back. “No worries.”

She grinned. Well, she’d plan to start with the bread. If that failed… she often did her best work off the cuff. And she did have that sword.

  
  


Her ‘offering to trade' plan seemed to be failing. They’d arrived at the edge of the faerie-inhabited woods early in the evening, and beyond a few snatches of high-pitched and unfriendly laughter, she’d had no response to her calls of greeting.   


“I’m going further in,” she told Spike, looking from the still-visible road behind them to the deep, dark, stereotypical-storybook-wood ahead.   


He stared forwards, ears pricked and lips tight, reserving his opinion for a change, so she started walking again without asking him to declare whether he was coming or not.   


The muffled hints of laughter from above grew as she moved deeper into the trees, and occasional snippets of what could have been voices squeaked from trunks and branches far ahead. Enticing and inviting her to walk straight into trouble, no doubt, but an encounter was what she was here for. Spike moved up to hover close behind her, placing his feet whisper-soft on the pine-needled ground and still listening hard to everything around them.

Ten minutes in, her tense expectation was beginning to fray on her. "I'm here to present an offering and beg one in return," she called up at the branches again. "I come in peace… and good intent."  _ Take me to your leader. _   


Any rustle of sound fell still, then a louder peal of laughter sounded from ahead and to the left.

"Fine," she grumbled under her breath, and followed it.   


A few more minutes of follow-the-twittering brought them to a thick hedge made entirely of thorns, tall and sharp and dense enough to be impenetrable to the eye. Circling its curving wall, she eventually found a doorway-like arched gap, giving them a view into mossy, deeply shadowed, round clearing. In the middle of the clearing stood a loosely scattered ring of big toadstools, purple-capped and white spotted, with a fungusy, noxious aroma she could smell from the doorway.   


“That’s a-” Spike started in a low whisper.

“Faerie circle. I know, don’t go in it,” she whispered back. The last thing she needed was to fall into yet another world from this one.   


“Sure your last watcher didn’t ask to be fired?” he growled, very low. “Bloody thankless job with a know-it-all little bint like you.”

“Sorry-” She was going to say more, but…  _ Quit arguing in the doorway and get on with it.  _ Leaving Spike there, she stepped carefully through the gap in the thorn hedge to stand on the mossy grass outside of the faerie circle. "Hello?" she asked of the empty clearing.   


Nothing. She looked back at Spike; his ears were twitching about slightly at the encircling hedge of thorns, but all he could offer was a lift of his eyebrows.

Swinging her bag around to the front, she untied the string closing it and took out one of the loaves of bread. "I come on a quest, set by Queen Snow White. I have brought this-"  _ don't say gift- _ "bread… I am… looking for some golden pins."

Still nothing. She scanned the ground, and found a flat stone the size of a placemat just outside the ring of toadstools.  _ Was that there before?  _ Stepping carefully up to it, she crouched down and placed the bread on top of it. It looked like really nice bread, now that she studied it properly. Golden and fresh and smelling faintly of honey, all artistically arranged on the dark wooden breadboard against the vibrant green moss…  _ No, that’s theirs, there's still some in your bag. _ Shaking her head to try and clear it, she stood up and stumbled back a couple of steps.

Chiming laughter rang out from every part of the hedge, beginning as the sound of a hundred tiny silver bells ringing in a breath of wind. In moments it had built, changed, become sharper and harsher; shrieking echoes of sheet metal being torn and nails drawn down blackboards, clanging and disorienting. She took another step back, half an eye on Spike, who was standing light on his toes in the middle of the doorway; she was glad to see that the thorns hadn't sprung to life and sealed it up on her, and hated the ' _ yet' _ that her brain helpfully tagged onto the thought.   


Spike’s attention fixed suddenly on the hedge opposite the doorway, and she turned, following it, to spot a flash of something zipping through the thorns, iridescent and transparent as a dragonfly's wing. As soon as she did, from behind her back came a sudden, loud yelp of surprise and pain, and she whirled back to see Spike holding one of his forepaws off the ground, up towards his body, and darting startled looks from it to the hedge. Then something hit her in the back of her shoulder, and she understood the  _ exact _ sensation behind that yelp.

It felt like she'd been shot with a nailgun, something long and sharp like a splinter designed by a giant - or maybe, conversely, a dollhouse-sized stake - punching through her skin to slide alongside the bone of her shoulder blade. She made a sound that wasn't unlike the one Spike had, and spun around again, eyes leaping everywhere on the targetless hedge that flashed and shimmered with the split-second flits of passing wings. "I don't mean any harm," she shouted at the clearing, one hand straying its way towards her sword and the other her shoulder as she backed closer to the exit. Spike had already retreated, biting at his leg- foot- hand- whatever as he backed away from the thorny circle, but she couldn’t just run away empty-handed.   


In answer, two more miniature stakes hit her, slamming into her thigh and the opposite bicep. She'd seen nothing, the damn things being fired somehow from the cover of the thorns- they had to  _ be  _ thorns, and, shit, perhaps she should worry less about the hedge closing up than it just impaling her with a thousand spines where she stood. But then she caught a glimpse of one of their attackers - a tiny, pointy-eared face behind a miniature pea shooter, wings whirring away behind it. Not the hedge. Evil scoundrel faeries.   


"Fucking  _ run _ ," Spike bellowed, then dipped his muzzle to the ground before sprinting further back from the hedge.

"I haven't got what I came for," she shouted back angrily, flinching and jumping when another thorn stabbed into her side.

"Yes you-" he snarled through gritted teeth, then seemed to redirect. "I do." His lips were pulled away from his teeth in what she'd thought was an angry grimace but now realised was him trying to hold something. " _ Now _ ," he hissed, then turned and ran again, not looking back.   


Indecision held her long enough for another stabbing volley of thorns, then she dropped any ideas about fighting and flew after him. Casting swift glances behind her as she ran, she caught the moment when a huge shimmering swarm of evil little not-dragonflies poured from the hedge and gave chase. There were  _ hundreds _ , and she grabbed for the hilt of her sword, tugging it free of her belt. Rusty and blunt or no, it was something to whack them with if they came close enough. It felt heavy in her hand, too heavy, dragging her arm sluggishly to her side. In fact,  _ all  _ of her felt heavy, weary and somnolent and burning dully at each thorn. “They’re chasing!” she shouted ahead to him.

Spike had slowed, letting her catch up, and as soon as she got close he spun in place, stumbling awkwardly over his feet, and spat out the thing in his mouth onto the ground. "Here," he ruffed. Then he lifted his muzzle, and howled.   


The sound was eerie and haunting, pouring out in liquid purity to fill the air all around her, rising and swelling and blanking out all other noise. The air seemed to chill with it, sending up goosebumps on her forearms and heightening the burning sensation from her extreme acupuncture, and the thickest fog she'd ever seen instantly began to condense all around them at the change in temperature.

_ How- _ She shoved the question aside; survive now, fill in details later. Spike was still howling, the sound stretching out and beginning to tail away, so she ran up to crouch beside him and look for the whatever that he’d put down.

It was a thorn, in shape; a thorn cast in gold, or moulded from it, to make a two-inch needle of metal, its perfect shining surface marred with the imprint of Spike’s teeth.  _ Guess I’ve got the golden pins I asked for. _ Spike’s eerie song faded out and he sat down heavily, tilting drunkenly before falling onto his side. Lying down on the invitingly soft ground looked like a really good idea. No, no it didn’t. There were evil faeries out there somewhere, through the fog. She’d let herself drop to one knee already, and she planted her fingers on the ground for balance, refusing to give in to the urge to curl up and sleep. “ _ Get up, _ ” she hissed at him in a whisper. How far was it back to the road? They’d walked in here quickly enough, and already covered a fair bit of ground in their dash; it couldn’t be much further at a run.

_ “Can’t,” _ he mumbled back, the whites of his eyes shining wide in fear. He lifted his muzzle and tried to reach back to a red smear on the fur of his flank, then gave it up as too hard and let his head flop back down on the moss.

She glanced around them, at the thick wall of fog on every side, at the silent, muffling screen of it. Then she sank down to sit beside him and tried to pull out the pin glinting goldly from his side. Maybe she could stab it back at their pursuers. It was a much lighter weapon than her too-heavy sword, and she was so very, very tired.

  
  
  


The sound of birds woke him, brightly chirping finches proclaiming their territory in the pre-dawn chorus. For a moment he thought he must have decided to sleep the night somewhere in the forest again, sick of the castle's endless cycle of balls as he frequently was, except that his mood was incongruous to that scenario in every way. Then he shifted his weight slightly and it all came rushing back. His wrist hurt, swollen and throbbing where that tiny faerie spine had stabbed through it. The ground was soft and restful, but it wasn't any part of  _ his _ patch of forest. And there was a warm body pressed up against his back, one arm wrapped around him.  _ Buffy. _ Another spine was clutched in her blood-smeared fist where it lay on his chest, and her hot breath was tickling the fur on the back of his neck.   


Moving very cautiously, he wriggled and crawled out from under her arm to stand up. His fog was dissipating slowly with the return to natural weather, but there was no sign of any imminent attack by faerie. Doubtless the pests could have done so while they both slept if they fancied, wet fog or no, so they must have had their fun for the moment.   


He sat down and considered the sleeping slayer. She hadn't stirred in the slightest when he'd slid free, sinking bonelessly against the ground where she'd been leaning against him. Her fist was still tight on her tiny weapon, a little frown of determination fixed on her brow.  _ Christ, do you ever turn off? _ The scent of drying blood marked out maybe half a dozen needle-things in her, and though it'd taken a while to put her down, she looked like she was set to stay there now that she'd finally surrendered.   


The forest felt like it had eyes, and he watched it suspiciously from the corner of his own while he thought over the problem. They were, after all, Dru's golden pins. She'd asked for them. So it was right that he should be getting them. At ease on all fronts with that logic, he continued doing so with renewed vigour, working his teeth in tiny nips to get a grip on the one protruding from her shoulder. Before long, he had a small pile of the things, the slayer had a few enlarged tears in her dress, and the taste of her blood was saccharine and tingling as honeyed whiskey in his throat. He'd tried to keep his tongue clear of it, tainted by thorns as it was, yet the self-denial had only heightened his awareness of all that redly living, vitality-giving stuff in a way he'd not yet experienced in his current form. Here was all the vibrancy and power of true life, distilled into a pure, volatile essence which saturated his mingled senses of scent and taste and promised to intoxicate him with its hidden truths in consumption. He lusted for it, and a deep part of him feared it.

And still she slept. Standing over her again, he hissed her name into her ear, followed by a command to wake the hell up; she didn't so much as twitch. He licked his tongue roughly over the curve of her ear, then across her face for good measure, slobbering plenty enough for her to leap up in a rage over. Nothing. A hint of a whine whispered from his throat, one of those damn unintentional and canine sounds that snuck up on him occasionally, and he scanned the forest around them again angrily, checking for foes before perhaps barking straight into her lazy eardrums. But then she moved.

Her frown deepened into one of discomfort, and one of her hands came up to rub drowsily at her slobbered-on eye. He jumped back, off of her, out of immediate reach and ready to retreat further if required. Dammit, his tail was wagging itself again. With an effort he froze it in place and stood motionless and wary, like a proper big bad wolf.   


Buffy rubbed her eyes open, then hissed in a breath and jerked her gaze around quickly before settling it on him. "What happened?"   


_ What indeed. _ "Sleeping spell," he told her. "Bastard faeries' idea of fun."

She sat up carefully, stretching out her muscles in assessment. "Are you okay?" she asked, looking down at her thigh as she felt out the small wound there with her fingertips.   


_ Obviously.  _ And she shouldn't care to pay lip service to whether he was or not. The whole scene prickled uncomfortably under his fur. They needed to leave it. Strange things might and often did happen in the wilds of this land, but all would be well and reset to its proper place once they returned to the castle at the centre of it.

Buffy looked up when he didn't immediately answer, studying his foreleg with a look of concern.   


"I'm fine," he told her curtly, then scented the air for any hint of faerie.   


"So am I," she said softly, flicking her eyes from her puncture holes to him.   


He nodded at the small pile of gold on the ground and spoke indifferently, "Best be carrying Dru's prize back to her then. Assuming we're not a century late."

That shook her, as he'd hoped it would. In moments she was up and gathering the pins carefully, wrapping them in her cloak before tucking them away in her bag. "We're not, are we?"   


He shrugged, content to let her squirm over it. "Could be. Let's get moving, yeah?"

"Yes." Adjusting the strap of her bag, she nodded at him to lead the way. 

  
  
  


“You’re being ridiculous,” she finally snapped, the last of her determination to let the idiot suffer for his pride crumbling into anger with the latest flinch of his foot. “I can see exactly how ‘fine’ that leg is every time you insist on trying to walk normally on it. Why don’t you just admit that it hurts and stop for a break?”

He halted in place to glower at her, obdurately setting his foot down again to stand on. “Can manage it.”

“I know you can. That doesn’t make it any less stupid! God, you're like a stubborn three-year-old.”

His eyebrows shot up, and he laughed a nasty, pointed little laugh before turning his head away sullenly. His foot trembled slightly, and she suspected the pain of it was silencing any rejoinder he might have made.   


She sighed, then looked around. The ground rose up a little on one side of the road, making a dusty grass verge, so she crossed to it and sat down, dumping her bag beside her.  _ See? It doesn't have to be so hard. _   


After a moment he followed, lying down carefully and pulling his leg up to lick at, expression still prickly.   


Perhaps the passage of time had coloured her memories of him also, but she didn't think so; all his grumpy posturing felt more like a veneer over new vulnerabilities than a character trait of the Spike she knew. "It's all swollen," she told him in a level voice. "So if you were thinking that I wouldn't notice it hasn't healed as easily as all mine, you're out of luck. What gives?"   


"Dogs are a mite more damageable than slayers," he admitted reluctantly.   


"Are dogs also in the habit of calling up fog storms as cover? Because I don’t ever remember hearing that one."

That got a grin from him, sly and wolfish. "Maybe."

" _ 'Run faster, bite harder, affect the weather.' _ Anything else I should know about?" She narrowed her eyes at him in a caricature of suspicion.

He held his silence, eyes glittering with returning good humour, and she found herself grinning back.   


Leaning on an elbow, she tugged her bag closer and took out their remaining loaf of bread, tore it in two, and offered one to him. He took it without comment, and she wondered how far his categorisation of her as 'a sodding do-gooder' stretched his willingness to accept friendly gestures. And why she so badly wanted to offer them. But he just seemed so… lonely. So absolutely determined to be seen as sensibly guarded and proudly aloof, yet so hungry for casual conversation and attention.   


"Can I do anything for it?" she asked, nodding at his foot.

"Nah. It'll be alright soon enough. Not worried we're going to be late?"

She waved her bread in a  _ whatever  _ gesture, trying to look nonchalant about it. "Either it's been a hundred years, and another few hours won't make any difference, or it's been one night, and I've still got a day and a half to get back."

"Second one," he said lightly.   


"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Assured and confident.   


_ You shit. _ She pressed her lips together, wavering over whether to ask. Something fragile and intangible hung like spider silk between them, acceptable for being unspoken and liable to evaporate if exposed. But she still had one task left, so it behoved her to try and work out where he stood. "Why? You could have left me there."

"Didn’t want to," he mumbled. "And you  _ should  _ have left me there, so it was only turnabout."

_ Playing fair now, are we? _   


"Don't get to thinking I've any fondness for your company," he added. "Or that there's any way you can win this. If you had a lick of sense you'd run back to that safe little hellmouth while you still can, because she’s not going to let you leave in one piece, and she  _ definitely  _ will not let you take her favourite toy away."

"You know I won't. Run."   


He pulled his lip tight in grudging acknowledgement, then told her in a low, even voice, "He doesn't deserve you." Rising to three feet, he took a couple of cautious steps with the wounded one held up out of action, seeming to find his new balance. Then he looked up at her expectantly, and they carried on walking.

  
  
  


They stopped twice more throughout the day, her looking as glad of the chance to rest as he was, and even more loath to admit she might need it. He understood; betray a weakness and you gave it power, and she was as wholly dependent on the strength of her own raw abilities here as he.   


He couldn't stop thinking about how he'd woken up. The feel of someone wrapped around him. Of being held. It ought to have unnerved him with its sense of restraint, and by a mortal enemy at that; instead his only discomfort came from the complete lack of such. He'd felt  _ safe _ there, in that first moment of waking; supported and protected by the circle of her presence, relaxed in some deep forgotten space of nerve and sinew that had been tensed for too long to remember ever being otherwise.   


He wanted to claw and scratch at her reasoning, force her to tell him she'd only stayed for not knowing where to go if she left him and ran. But he feared she'd instead reveal the truth he'd tasted through an onrushing fog of faerie-slumber: leaving him to his fate had never even crossed her mind. Which would then undoubtedly force his own into the light: neither had he her.   


And more than he wanted her denial, he wanted her to touch him again.   


A few feet away, she trailed the fingers of one hand along the tops of a patch of tall, seeded grass growing beside this stretch of road. Seedheads shook and rattled softly beneath her caress, ripe grains springing free to tumble down to the soil waiting below to receive them.   


_ You could have been a harvest goddess, summoning rich life from the earth where you now hunt death. You could have been autumn sunshine, banishing the night and swelling plump fruit on the trees. You could have been anything but what you are, and I should have been touched by you.  _

_ And then I should have had no care for it.  _ Because she was none of those things. She was Buffy, Buffy who danced and stomped and tiptoed and could hit him through a wall and offered to share her bread with shy, delicate fingers, and it was  _ her _ hands he longed to feel the touch of again.   


He drifted closer, step by gradual step, until he was walking close beside her, dropping the awkward three-legged hop to limp gingerly for a while.   


The fur of his ruff skimmed against the fingers dangling by her side, and they became very carefully still. He said nothing, watching the road ahead with detached boredom, refusing to do what he was doing, and eventually they moved again, the back of her hand ever-so-slightly and deliberately brushing against his fur as she walked.   


"Do you want to stop?" she asked quietly, without looking at him.

_ Yes. No. I don't know.  _ "No," he answered the same way.   


"Okay." Her fingers kept up their rhythmic almost-accidental stroking, and they kept walking.

  
  
  


Darkness fell, and Spike began checking the skyline frequently, moving away from her side to the far edge of the road and pulling his aura of cold aloofness back around him like he once had that leather coat. The back of her hand felt warm from his fur, and she smiled secretly to herself. The big bad wolf liked pats.   


At the rise that brought the castle into view he came to a halt, looking up at her speculatively.   


"I wasn't here," he said quietly. "Right?"

She frowned. "Weren't you supposed to be supervising me? What if someone asks?"

"Not exactly," he mumbled. "And no one will."

"Okay," she said doubtfully.   


He nodded once, short and firm, then turned and hop-loped away, still swift for his out of action leg. It was, she supposed, still one more than she had. She watched him vanish into midnight fields, new questions swirling like smoke.


	10. Watch Your Feet

Arriving back at the castle in the middle of the night before she was due to present her latest bounty put her in the unexpected position of being able to sleep in, which she took full advantage of. With  _ all _ of the available blankets.   


She awoke feeling like she was running late, the day half gone and surely she had things she was meant to have done and places she was meant to be… except, she really didn't. Yawning comfortably, she watched puffy white clouds drift across blue sky through her small windowpanes and wondered what it would be like to live here. Boring, most likely. The shine would fade from the glittering evenings after the hundredth time, and then there'd only be the small world restricted between its narrow book covers to explore. Spike had sworn he could run the borders of it in a single day and night. Which still made it far larger than Sunnydale and its environs, which she never seemed to travel beyond, but it was always nice to know that the rest of the big wide world was out there waiting in case she ever got the opportunity. Still, boring would be a decadent luxury for a while. It was the spectre of loneliness that really stole all the attraction of the idea. Feelings she'd been doing her best to ignore slithered forth again; she was alone here by sensible necessity, imperilled enough by Dru's tasks and fairy-tale dangers to keep her thoughts strictly focused on the business of survival, but as much as she missed her friends and was going to bury herself in a group hug as soon as she was able… when that was over she would still be strange lonely Buffy who dodges second dates, only no longer with the admirable excuse of 'in a long-distance relationship' to fall back on. Unless she could rediscover what she'd had with Angel. Maybe the magic would return once they were home free. She was going to choose to believe it would, in any case, because pessimism got you nowhere in a battle. And she was two-thirds of the way through this one.   


Yet two-thirds wasn't any reassurance; she had a horrible inkling that Drusilla had only been idly toying with her thus far, and would attempt to crush her like an annoying bug now that she’d made it to the final task. For all their difficulties, there had been nothing particularly  _ testing  _ of her determination or conviction in the first two, no riddle of wits or personality as she had expected when she made her challenge. And none of the gruesome possibilities she would have had to refuse.

_ She'd better not ask me to cut Angel in half to share… _ the thought shot like a falling star towards a fiery collision with the rocks saying things like 'Angelus' and ' _ it can't get out in here' _ , and she jumped out of bed. Problems would be met if and when they arose. She wasn't going to look for trouble by imagining them ahead of time.   


After dressing in clean clothes and lacing her boots back on, she tugged her door open, intending to find out where that library was that Angel had mentioned and whether she could pry into it.   


The hallway outside of her door was empty. She looked left and right down it, hoping to spot a fluffy tail somehow camouflaged from view on her first sweep; nothing. A niggle of concern for him crept up from her toes, warring against the very logical idea that of course he had other things to do than guard her door all day while she lay around in bed. He was a big vampire-wolf. He could look after himself. But all the same, she wished she knew he'd gotten back safely. And not found himself in trouble for helping her, to food or with anything else.   


Closing the door again, she crossed to her windows that faced back at part of the castle and studied what she could see of it. She'd looped the outside last night, finding the turret that held her bedroom from the garden below in the same way she'd found the front entrance the day before. The middle of the vast place was a confusing maze of twists and turns, bits sticking up in every direction and hallways that she was beginning to suspect of changing behind her back, for the routes she'd been led on never looked the same over her shoulder. A large, straight-walled wing to the east looked interesting, so perhaps she'd start her search there and hope to come across someone or thing for directions. They needed signposts on the walls around here. Or visitor maps.   


A movement at the end of the courtyard below caught her eye, and she leaned closer to the glass to peer down there. Angel. His head was down, something furtive in his movement as he hurried along in the strip of shade cast by the building's shadow. Or maybe he was just uncomfortable with the nearness of the sun.   


_ Please be coming here… _ She unlatched the window and pushed it open, waving when he looked up at the sound. Dammit, she felt like Rapunzel trapped in her tower, but she could hardly run down to catch him without getting hopelessly turned around and behind. Besides, if he'd snuck away from Drusilla to visit, better to let him do his best ninja impression and sneak up here without attracting unwanted attention.   


Angel gave her a quick nod, then carried on walking.  _ Good _ . Almost at the foot of her tower, he was half-hidden by one of the topiary bushes when he slowed for a step, then swung his foot hard at something behind it.   


Spike shot up and out with a snarl, spinning to bare his teeth back at his attacker automatically. Angel just stood there, watching him, and Spike’s half-launched counter-attack turned into a low, growling retreat out into the middle of the sunny yard, where he drew himself up stiffly before very deliberately lying down again.   


Angel said something to him in his own growly voice, then carried on walking, opening and closing a door into the castle a moment later.   


Spike stared after him until the door shut, then turned his turbulent, hate-filled glare up to her in scathing reproach.   


Cheeks burning, she ducked back from the window and pressed her back against the stone wall beside it, a sick feeling of empathy and embarrassment sloshing around inside her. Stupid. He was only a vampire, however un-vampirey he might look. And act. And she'd hit him harder than that herself on several occasions.  _ But not when he was just minding his own business, sleeping in the sun. _ Not when he was tired from helping her. Most of all, not when he was obviously unable or unwilling to either fight back or leave, and as vulnerable to being hurt as any mortal creature. He seemed so empty of supports here beyond his assumed pride, and in witnessing his cringing retreat she'd unwittingly stripped him of the prop of it before her.

Angel's footsteps approached her door, and she took a deep breath, squashing the feelings down and masking her face before she went to open it. There were layers here she didn't understand, maybe didn't want to; history she wasn't privy to that surely explained Angel's behaviour. She wasn't here to play judge and jury over some vampiric family grudge. Rescue Angel, get home, and they'd all be better off.

  
  


Angel dutifully led her to the library, sending away a woman who was dusting the shelves and locking the door behind her.

"Are you allowed to be wandering about with me today?" she asked, half teasingly, once they were alone.   


"It's daytime; Snow White's asleep. She won't miss me." He moved closer, gazing down at her with the mildly pleading face she remembered best. "Besides, I wanted to see you. Myrtle said you were back."

_ Myrtle, that was her name.  _ She hadn't seen the young woman who had introduced herself as her maid since she'd helped her find her way to the last ball, but she must have checked on her room and found it locked. "Yep. Nice and early." She turned to the bookshelves, browsing her way along the nearest in an effort to regain her sense of personal space. "I thought I should see if there's anything here that might be helpful…" The entire shelf seemed to be full of fairy-tales; single stories, compilations, different editions of the same tales over and over and over. She checked the next shelf, paying more attention now; they were all the same.   


"I don't know what she's planning for the morning," Angel said ominously.   


"Something tells me it might have something to do with a fairy-tale," she said, quirking her lip up.   


_ Neutral woe-is-me face, on repeat. _ He looked so glum. The past two years- god, make that all of his years, must have been unimaginably hard.

"How are you coping?" she asked gently, regretting the misplaced, muddled emotions that had made her decidedly stand-offish so far. "I wanted to say something to you the other night, but it didn't exactly seem like the right audience."

"What did you want to say?" he asked softly, moving closer again.   


She smiled up at him tenderly, and covered his hand with her own where it lay on the shelf. "That I've got this. So hang in there, because soon we're going home."   


He smiled back slightly, but it was still a vague, despondent thing. Well, she would just have to show him. Removing her hand to turn back to the shelves, slid a book out at random and began paging through it.  _ Ooh, pictures!  _ There were glossy colour plates interspersed through it; Puss in Boots eating the mouse-troll, Cinderella's coach. Which jogged a question.   


"Am I going to have a problem if I wear the same dress tonight? Charming, third ball, etc."

Angel thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Just don't let him get hold of your slipper. And if he does, get rid of the other one before he comes looking for it."

"Okay. Good." And surprisingly helpful. She should strike while the iron was hot and other idioms. She turned to look at him, combing through a million questions from, ' _ why _ did you make this stupid deal' to, 'was it your choice to sleep with Drusilla'. "Why did you kick Spike?"  _ Whoops.   
_

"What?" he asked, surprised.   


"Earlier. Outside my room," she added, flicking pages and studying the next plate.   


"Why… He's a vampire, Buffy, not a puppy. You shouldn't feel sorry for him just because he has fur. And watch out if you see him around anywhere. He bites."

"O...kay," she said, somewhat sceptically.

"I mean it. He killed all the other dogs here." Angel's frown deepened. " _ They _ were nice dogs. Big sleek hunting hounds."

"Oh." Now she was frowning too, a sullen pout down at the stupid book she was pretending to read. It shouldn't have been a surprise. Of course Angel wouldn’t just go around kicking dogs. He sounded like he  _ liked  _ dogs. That was supposed to be a sign of a person's good character, wasn't it? Or was that if dogs liked you? Anyway. Spike wasn't one. He was the same vampire who had trapped her in a basement and sent assassins after her. And she needed to remember that if she started thinking he was on her side. Spike was on  _ Spike’s  _ side.   


She put down the book and picked up a different one.  _ The Frog Prince. _ Perhaps she should have paid more attention to the ponds they'd passed yesterday. They were probably full of waiting princes and golden balls. Nice, simple frogmen she could slam into the nearest wall.   
  
  
  


This was getting her nowhere. Conversation with Angel was stilted and awkward yet just frequent enough to keep her from properly concentrating on reading anything; she felt she'd read all of this before, a lifetime of gradual osmosis even before the intentional research she'd done during the last two years.  _ Come standing on a goat and wearing a fishing net… help a well-disguised witch out of the kindness of your heart. _ There were as many challenges as books here, and yet none that exactly matched her first two.  _ Back to winging it. _

"Can I take a couple of these back to my room?" she asked Angel. "Sorry, I'm kinda worn out still."

"Of course. You should get all the rest you can. Big day tomorrow." He smiled into the distance, as though finally seeing their approaching escape.

"Yep. You'll be ready, as soon as it's over? I get the feeling we shouldn't loiter after the fact."  _ Man, I hope my half-assed pond plan works…   
_

"Definitely." His smile turned awkward and sheepish, and he dropped it to her waist. "Buffy, I… I never forgot that it's my destiny to help you, to protect you. I only thought, for a while, that I was meant to do that by staying here. But I see it now. I'm just sorry you've had to go through this first."

"Your  _ destiny _ ?" she asked weakly.   


"Yes." Perfectly nonchalant.   


_ Alright…   
_

"Anyway, I should be getting downstairs before Snow gets up. I'll show you back to your room."

Grabbing the nearest couple of compendiums, she nodded and followed him.  _ Destiny? _ Add it to the list to be discussed back home.    
  
  
  


Buffy spent a quiet afternoon reading her way through one of the books she'd taken back to her room, finding an ironic sense of blessed escape in immersing herself in other people's tales whilst sitting on a canopied bed in a turreted tower in what was literal fairy-tale land. Because the stories in the book were beautiful lies. Every one of them. And not only with all their  _ and they lived happily ever after _ .   


Here was a heroine, kind and pure of heart, and though she might fall afoul of wicked circumstance, her outer and inner beauty would somehow see her easily through every obstacle to a life of ease and happiness. Here was a hero, recognisable by his happy smile and casual confidence. And here were the villains, marked plainly by their ugly faces and evil acts, as pure in their wickedness as the opposition were in goodness. And the villains always got exactly what they deserved (or rather more, with gruesome death aplenty for even small transgressions against the heroes), and were never sympathetic. And the heroes were never tarnished, and got more than they deserved also.

It was the same pretty lie Giles had spun her in kind jest those years before, and why she had expected it to be any truer here… nothing was ever simple. She was no humble princess. She had no lust for revenge, nor simple faith in motive. She had a veritable minefield of confusing contradictions, and a thin ribbon of convictions to plot her path between them.   


So it was nice to get lost somewhere simple.

Then she put on her dress and her glass slippers, pocketed her sheaf of golden hairpins, and walked down to the ball with Myrtle.   


The girl's excessive nervousness had faded, and with a little prompting, she began describing her life in the castle. There were _two_ _hundred_ staff. Half of them lived here full time; the rest in the village nearby. They were all glad of Snow White, with her beautiful white skin and black hair, and _she once gave me these beautiful gloves,_ and proud of how they kept things running smoothly for her. The others were all worried about this new Cinderella's intrusion, but not Myrtle, oh no, she knew her queen had everything in hand.   


"Thanks," Buffy said dryly.

"You must consider Charming," Myrtle said slyly. "If you accept his hand, I'm sure the queen shall be satisfied to give you to him once you are hers. And he's a lovely man. So very…"

"Charming. I noticed." As backup plans went, it sucked.

"My auntie wedded a prince from the frog pond," Myrtle chattered on; now that her tongue had been loosened, Buffy wondered how she'd ever kept it in check. "She threw in a perfect orange and they pretended it was a gold ball. Now she has her own castle, far far away. Other people try sometimes, but it just fills the pond with oranges… I guess the rest of them are just plain old frogs. Or too picky for their own good."

"Your auntie lives where?" she asked.   


"Far far away- Oh." She pointed in a vague direction through the castle walls. "Down the empty road, in her own story. You have to be going somewhere to get there. You'll see, if Charming accepts you. Oh but I hope we can have the wedding here before you leave! Weddings are such splendid affairs."

_ Slow down, Miss enthusiasm.   
_

"Here we are!" Myrtle's eyes crawled hungrily over the busy entrance foyer below them. "Good luck. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow." Then she gave Buffy a firm little nudge and stepped away.

  
  


_ Queen Snow White  _ was as inscrutable and minacious as a waiting feline, and Buffy had to fight not to feel like the gullible little mouse happily loading her larder for the coming winter. There was no opportunity to return insult or quip, only a cold, precise anticipation of what the morrow might taste of.   


And then the queen retired to the tea room, and Buffy-rella danced with Charming. He was sweet, in his open, friendly way, and when he remained completely unfazed by her assertion that she would  _ not _ be taking this little dalliance any further than the dance floor, she relaxed into the evening. So she wasn’t a princess, or even an ordinary girl. So she might have some hideous task awaiting her. That didn’t mean she couldn’t play pretend. 

  
  
  


Licking the sugar-crystal taste of tiny faerie wings from his muzzle, Spike prowled the leafy corners of the front garden for any more evil little visitors who thought to complain to the queen of his conduct. They were delicious, crunchy and sweet like syrup-filled glass candy, and only too easy to snap from the air when away from their home ground and unarmed. Still, he'd better remember to give their patch a wide berth for a while, just in case he'd missed any here. The swelling in his leg was much improved by the afternoon of rest, but it would be at least the night before it stood up to any close scrutiny, and he had no wish to explain to anyone just how he'd got himself into (and even worse,  _ them _ out of) a dispute with the smallest nation of forest fae.   


Behind him the ball glittered on, mind-numbingly boring with its violins and cellos, its polite separation between parties and its carefully tailored voices. Fuck but he missed real gigs; the sweaty, thrashing collisions of pogoing bodies, the screaming laughter of careless unbridled enthusiasm for whatever shitty band was screaming back from the stage. These ballroom affairs belonged to a time gladly buried with William, and he had never had any inclination to return to them. Perhaps he should get to know the trolls. At least they had enough honest passion in their veins to own a set of drums.

Sneering at the fabrication these people sewed themselves into, he hopped up onto the balcony, slinking through the crowd with just a little too much menace in his step for them to comfortably ignore him. However firmly he might wear the designation of 'hound', their baser instincts knew a wolf when they saw one and set them shuffling uncomfortably like a fold of nervous sheep.   


Inside, Buffy had been swept into one of the circles of the maiden's rotation dance, where she had her arms linked with Clarissa, doing her best to mimic her demonstration and looking altogether very friendly with her. Tendrils of hair had escaped their complicated and enchanted updo to trail subversively down her neck, and as he watched she tucked one back into place with a quick dart of her fingers, only for it to begin sneaking free again immediately. Oh, she had the right dress and an acceptable label, but trying to play herself down inside it was a losing battle even without the obvious metaphor on display. By the time she left the party she'd probably be itching to get out on the hunt and unleash all her politely stifled brilliance. She was smiling, though. Smiling like-  _ No _ .  _ Don't start that shit, you wanker. _

"Hound," a voice addressed him, and he turned away from the open doors into the ballroom to find Charming leaning back on the balcony railing, cigarette in hand. God but he could kill him for his nonchalant ease; smoking was now an embarrassingly difficult performance even if he could get his paws on the equipment.   


Spike watched him silently, eyes narrowed.   


"What do you know about her?" Charming asked, nodding at Buffy inside. "Under her role here. You came from the same book, yes?"

"Yeah," he said, low and equivocal.   


"What should I get for her to show my affections? She insists on spurning my advances for her pursuit of the woodcutter, when he is most inadmissible as a consort for any girl, let alone one with her fine manners and sweetness of smile."

Spike scoffed a quiet breath of a laugh.  _ You poor bastard. _ Charming had it bad if he was genuinely seeking the nearest dog's advice, and neither a shit show in fairy of getting anywhere nor any notion of what he'd be marrying himself to if he did. Spike turned back to watch Buffy - the  _ slayer  _ \- while he considered his answer. At least Charming always saw straight through Angel; his despise for the wanker's evasive and woebegone act almost overwhelmed his strict adherence to politeness whenever they found themselves in the same room.   


"Gift her your sword," he said, turning back to Charming. " _ That _ one, not the other kind." He nodded at the decorative scabbard hanging from Charming's belt.   


Charming blushed and stammered his affront at the mere suggestion he would be anything but respectfully chaste without a marriage contract, then turned to his sword speculatively. "Oh? Is that- is it a customary gift, in her home story?" He drew his brows down sternly. "You had best not be making sport of me, Hound."

Spike gave him his best aloof, enigmatic look, then began slinking disdainfully away. "You asked, I answered. Do with it what you will," he called back over his shoulder. 

  
  
  


The clock on the wall seemed to spin unnaturally fast; when she next checked it between dances, it read a quarter to twelve. A vision of her dress dissolving away at the stroke of midnight to leave her standing there naked while everyone stopped to laugh fluttered on the floor of her stomach, and she turned to Charming apologetically. "Sorry. I need to… leave, now."   


He checked the time himself, and seemed equally surprised. "Oh. Of course. Let me escort you." Without giving her a chance to refuse, he took her hand and led her easily through the crowd and towards, she was sure, the hallway she had come here by. "To your room?" he asked, turning almost shy for the first time during their acquaintance. "I promise I shall see you safely closeted - alone - before the clocks ring."

"Since you promised," she conceded.   


"Excellent!" A new spring in his step, he guided her smoothly through the maze to her bedroom door, where he pulled out a pocket watch and held it out for them to inspect together. Four minutes remaining.   


"Thank you," she told him honestly. "For everything. If I don't see you again… you've been-"  _ don't say charming- _ "good company. Thank you."

"Oh I'll see you again," he said confidently. "But for tonight, I wanted to give you this." He reached for his belt buckle, and for a moment, she thought she'd read him as entirely wrong as everything else around here. But then his sword belt slid free, and he held the beautiful sheath towards her on his open palms.   


When she made no move to take it, he pushed it further at her. "Please. A meagre token of my appreciation for your most illustrious company this eve. It presents no obligation to you, only lessens my own, in however minuscule a fashion."

She picked it up carefully, fingers subconsciously making their own introductions to the weight and feel of it. "Thank you," she said again, rueing her inadequacy of language.   


"Best of luck for tomorrow, dearest Cinder," he said happily. Then he gave her a quick bow, and strode away.

It wasn't until she had locked her door behind her and settled the sword gently on her bed for later investigation that she realised she was missing one glass slipper. She lifted her dress this way and that, turning in a circle as she searched the floor.  _ Shit. Shit. Shit.  _ What was he, a freakin sleight-of-hand magician that could skim the shoe right off your foot while distracting you with a shiny prezzie? No, he hadn’t gone near her feet at the door, she was sure of it. But how could she have completely failed to notice that she was walking with one stocking bared if she'd lost it any sooner? Never mind that the things took a fair bit of careful wriggling to get on and off, being made entirely of inflexible glass.  _ Shit. _ Dropping to her knees, she searched the floor again, casting about under the bed and behind the chest. Nothing, and a sense of inevitability about the whole thing.   


_ Think. _ Okay, she needed to get rid of the other one, and the matching dress, in case he came waving his glass ticket before she could take Angel and get gone. Would that really help, though? Surely he'd recognise her just as well without her shoes. He probably hadn't even  _ seen  _ her feet in them under all the dress. And Cinderella didn't  _ have  _ to marry the prince, did she? She'd just, like, wanted to, and the shoes were her way of proving her identity so she could.   


She let out a snarl of frustration at the empty room and herself, then kicked off her remaining slipper, fought her way free of the ball gown, and bundled them up together. Chucking on one of the plainer dresses, she tucked the illicit bundle under her arm and peered out of the door carefully. Empty. Good.   


She'd made it down to the first landing on the nearest stairwell, aiming for the rear courtyard and beyond and maybe a handy well to throw the lot in, when Myrtle popped out in front of her, something quick and keen in her face as she zeroed in on the bundle. Boldly challenging, too, in a way that suggested her workday subservience might have expired at midnight.   


"Where are you going with that, miss?" she asked calculatingly.   


"Um- I was just- See, there's this-"

"Reason  _ you _ don't want to marry him," she cut in. "But you wouldn't be thinking of pinning anyone else with the task, now would you? I'm sure you were just out here looking for me in order to gain some assistance in disposing of it safely. I know how much you  _ respect  _ the queen."

_ Ohh, she thinks I was going to try and set up Dru. Or, Charming, I guess, if he tried to marry her. _ The completely wrong supposition almost made her want to laugh in relief. But then why was Myrtle so willing to intercede like this-  _ You sneaky thing. _ Trying her best to keep looking guilty and caught out, Buffy said, "Yes. Yes, of course. Can you help me? Please, Myrtle, I don't know what to do."  _ Too much? God I hope not.   
_

Apparently not. "Of course," Myrtle said in a quiet, underhanded voice. "Pass it over and I'll make sure it's taken care of. No one needs to know." She reached for the bundle, and Buffy let her take it. "Now you scurry back to your room, won't you? It's not safe to wander about at night. You might get lost."

"Of course," Buffy echoed. "Thank you." Then she did as she was told, and scurried back to her room.


	11. True Stories of Unicorns

There was a book waiting on her pillow. Leatherbound, embossed; not dissimilar to one of the ones she had borrowed from the library. It was not, however, one of the ones she had borrowed from the library, which sat in a tidy pile on the chest. The cover was a different colour of leather, a mite smaller. Also, there was a folded scrap of paper on top of it.   


A huge full moon shone clear and pale through the windows, casting barred lines of shadow across the bed and making the notepaper glow in its own little diamond of cold light. It could have been helpful, given her lack of a candle; it hung instead in sinister ill-omen, uncanny unto unnaturalness. Pushing the feeling aside, she strode to the bed and picked up the note.

_ 'You missed this one. _ ' it read, in someone's even, precise cursive script. It could, she supposed, be Angel's. Or anyone else here's. It wasn't like he'd ever written to her for her to have a chance of recognising his hand. Huffing a tiny sigh through her nose, she set the note aside and picked up the book.  _ The Mule-King. _ Well, her mysterious book-leaver was correct; she didn't recall ever reading this one. Putting it down again, she doubled back to the hallway and the nearest candle, then closed the curtains on the over-large moon and sat down to read.

  
  
  


The Mule-King

Once upon a time there was a most dashing king, who was truly accomplished during the hunt, attentive to the varied whims of his wife, and cosseted his only daughter as the greatest creation of his heart. For many years they lived a life of ease and pleasure together, and all were content.   


Wishing to repay the king for a particularly extravagant gift, the queen took to the hunting field one day, where she captured a most beautiful crow, with shining black wings and tender young flesh in its breast. However, what the queen did not know that this crow belonged to an evil warlock, who would turn his jealous rage upon anyone who took it from him. Unknowing, the queen presented the bird to her husband the king, who thanked her for the gift and ate it all up for his supper.

That night, a terrible curse struck the king. He writhed in pain as something seemed to burn inside his breast, lodging itself inside of him and transforming his body into that of a mule. The queen saw that this was no good, and attempted to reason with the warlock who had cast the spell, but he would not be reasoned with, and then he was gone.   


Over long months, the queen and daughter tried to help their transformed king, for they both loved him dearly and were certain he would come back to himself with their encouragement. They brought him special meals he would once have adored; these were painful for a mule to consume, and he began to turn aside from them. They took him to places he would once have enjoyed; he found no pleasure in them. Try though he did to accustom himself to his new situation and go on much as he had before, eventually the pain grew too great for him to withhold, and he was forced to leave his family behind and set out into the world on his own.

For many years the cursed mule-king wandered the world, trying to find any way to rid himself of his pain, but nothing would help. Broken-hearted without him, his wife and child grew apart, and eventually went their separate ways. From time to time the daughter heard tell of the fallen king, and it pained her heart to be so abandoned by him.

Ninety-nine years had come and gone when the daughter came upon him again, living alongside a herd of horses and making friends among such. The daughter was well versed in traditional tales, and thus she knew that a curse intended to make the king suffer for his crime would finally be broken once he became so accustomed to his new form that his heart was able to swell at the touch of true love and happiness again. And here, she gladly saw, was the chance at last for him to be set free, for one of the fillies had captured the heart of her king, and was beginning to lift him from his terrible suffering.   


At first, the daughter thought to rejoice, for he would soon be returned to her. But as she looked upon the heart of the king, a great apprehension crept upon her, for she saw that it now belonged too firmly to the golden filly which was lightening it, and she knew that he would not so easily cast her aside. As a stepmother, the filly was a troubling prospect. She was sure to disenfranchise her stepdaughter, as all the tales went, and relegate her to the scullery while she took all the king's best affections for herself. She was also entirely the wrong species to make the restored king a good bride; marrying oneself to a horse was bound to be a perilous task in the performance of it. Having waited so very long to have her daddy back, the king's daughter was heartbroken once more at the choice before her.

A mule, she decided, was enjoyable in its own way. They were, after all, beasts of service. With her own mother sadly gone, she herself could tame him with his burdens, and cleave his heart to her own and a distant memory, if she could only spirit him away from the marriage lurking on the horizon. It was better indeed to have him as her own bridled mule than to lose all over again. And he had always been a touch  _ too _ ambitious as a ruling king; it would only have caused his downfall once more. So as the date too swiftly approached that would mark one hundred years since the curse was cast, the daughter spun the lines of fate herself, and stole him away from the breaking of it which she had foreseen.   


In a distant land they made their new home, and the daughter found things there very much to her fancy. The mule-king too was happy in his way, proud to live his mulish life of drudgery, and when he thought of the stepmother who was not to be, it was with a distant longing which kept him safely burdened. He was, the daughter came to see, a much better mule than he had ever been a vampire. 

  
  
  


Buffy swallowed hard, then turned the page, looking for the following story that would wipe away - undo - uncreate - the last one. The next page was blank, and the one after it, and all the many more to the back of the back cover. Her heart thumped like a sombre death knell in her chest, and her head felt impossibly full, packed with scrunched and shredded paper like a mouse's nest, only without the tiny hollow to curl safely inside at its centre.   


She turned the book back over, and read its few pages again. The story didn't change, and it did.  _ It's all a question of perspective.  _ Had her history teacher said that? Or was it an advertising slogan?  _ History is written by the victors. _ She shook her head, and read the tale again. Then she picked up the note, and pondered it anew.   


If it was from Angel… then she had to assume he both knew the tale and believed in it. It could explain why he'd been so flustered to find her here. And given a day to reflect, perhaps he'd decided he could manage the risk after all, just as he'd fought to manage his bloodlust in her company. True love and happiness did not sit calmly next to 'catastrophic personality changes', surely. Or maybe it had something to do with the other tale he'd mentioned, the one where she was somehow his destiny. She wasn't sure she wanted to be anyone's destiny. Indeed, she was pretty damn certain she did not. One unchosen and inescapable destiny was quite enough, thank you very much, and what little life was her own was damn well _her own,_ to hell with higher forces.   


Unless it had been left by Drusilla. Or on her orders. She had to be the author, after all, though none was recorded. A trump card casually played when her opponent saw success in the next hand; win if you must, but understand the prize you play for is anything but. Something calculated to throw her off her game, distract her tomorrow - today, now - or spook her into running before it. Or, it was the reason she'd been so uncaring with the tasks she'd set - it had never meant to matter whether she succeeded or not, so Drusilla had only had her running errands while she was conveniently offering her services.   


Or perhaps it had been Spike. With a little help from someone better able to hold a pen. A nasty little practical joke to ensure Angel was all tied up in miserable knots after she rescued him, while Spike got the last laugh.   


Too many ifs and ors and maybes. Tucking the book under one arm, she swung off the bed, determined to find someone to beat or beg answers from. Spike was curled in his spot from the other morning, where he paused lazily in the middle of licking the back of his paw-hand when she opened her door.

"Was this you?" she snapped, stomping into the hall and holding the book up to him.   


"Wake the whole sodding castle, why don't you," he murmured casually, then lowered his eyes from her face to the book and opened his jaws in a wide yawn. "Was what me, slayer? Big bad wolf in your bedtime story giving you nightmares?"

"Did you-" she pointed at him accusingly- "leave me-" she jabbed a finger at herself, then shook the book at him- "this book?"

He watched her impassively for a moment, then yawned again. "No."

"Do you know who did?"

"Why would I- I'm not here for a bloody inquisition, pet. Sod off."

She ground her teeth, counting backwards from ten in her head. To six, anyway.  _ Why _ did he always have to be so- so antagonistic? "Have you read it?" she asked, quietening her voice. "Someone left it for me, with a note."   


"No…" After a moment's deliberation, he added, "Looks like one of Dru's. They're not for general consumption."   


She looked at the cover herself again, as though it might reveal something new. "Are they… true? Here?"   


"Far as I've seen, true as my bushy tail," he said, ears lifting as he became more interested. Or awake. "Why?"

"No reason," she said quickly. "I don't suppose there's any chance Angel might be free to talk to me?"

One corner of his lip tugged down in a lopsided frown. "Not unless by 'free' you mean 'performing his latest harp solo for a closed audience of one'. It's enough to make you beg Dru to put you out of your misery if she doesn't eat you just for busting in."

"Angel… plays the  _ harp?" _ she asked weakly.   


His expression turned cynical and mocking. "Wouldn't go so far as 'plays'. But yes. Fitting, ain't it? So shove off and let me sleep. Sun'll be rising in… about six hours." He tucked his tail up pointedly and closed his eyes.   


Buffy bit her lip, staring down the dark and quiet hallway. Alright. Crashing Dru's little party for one probably wouldn’t get her anywhere. If she could even find it. And Spike had a point, loath though she was to admit it; dawn was around the corner, and she had an appointment there to keep. Sighing, she withdrew to her room again.   


Freaky-big-moon was gone; opening a curtain to peer at the sky, she found it thickly clouded over and an even shade of soupy grey from one side to the other.  _ Weird.  _ But hardly the weirdest peculiarity of this place. Or of home, for that matter. The castle seemed to lurk in the dark, black stones swallowing the meagre reflected light, its few visible candlelit windows more like the waiting eyes of some great shadowy beast than anything representing warmth or companionship. She would not have been surprised, in that moment, if it had unfolded a huge pair of leathery wings and carried them off hunting through the sky. She could almost-  _ No, god, don't think song. _ Closing the curtain quickly, she climbed into bed.

What felt like ten hours later, she rolled over for the umpteenth time and opened her eyes to stare at the dark ceiling above. At least it was warmer tonight. Or it was in her bed. Was Spike cold? He needed - and now she was almost smiling to herself - one of those little cane dog baskets. And a fleecy coat. Any colour but black. Imagining him dressed in a succession of such occupied her for what had to be a few minutes, then she was back at the beginning. Maybe she should offer him a blanket. No, he'd only sneer at her. And:  _ He. Is. Not. A. Dog. _ One must not grow soft on evil vampires just because they now had soft fur. Well, sort of soft. And kinda bristly. And smelling of dog.   


Roll over, try facing left again. How many endless hours to go? Spike was not nearly enough distraction from the scrunchy swirl of,  _ does Angel know his curse can be broken … can his curse be broken … am I destined to be the evil stepmother- _ That would make her… Spike’s step-grandmother? Oh, she needed to find a way to give him shit about that. As punishment, for  _ sleeping  _ when he should be doing something outlandish and irritating to keep her awake.   


Roll over, look at the shape of that one window on the right. She was sure it was different somehow, the stones bordering it cut on a slightly different angle, something. Hard to tell in the dark.  _ God-fucking-dammit. _

And then a bird sang, a  _ heet-heet-heeet _ piercing the dark, and another answered it with something chirpier, and it was time to get up, and there was snow on her windowpanes.

  
  


Drusilla sat alone in the ballroom, idly spinning something pendulum-style on a silver chain over her lap. At first it looked like a red ball, or,  _ ick, _ maybe something gory, but as Buffy crossed the room, it resolved itself into a small, smooth apple, made of transparent, blood-red glass.   


"Do you like it?" Drusilla asked, snapping its chain to snatch it into her palm. She raised it between her thumb and forefinger, peering into it, then looked down at Buffy. "It cannot be eaten. It reveals nothing. It is altogether rather useless, I believe. It is called the  _ Ruby Apple Stone, _ and why it should be so valuable, I cannot fathom." After pressing her claw-like and equally blood-red fingers briefly against its surface, she spun her hand and tucked the ruby apple into a fold of her dress.

Buffy waited until Drusilla’s eyes travelled back to her own, then asked with quiet potency, "Does Angel know the story?"

Drusilla smiled, too widely, too vacantly. "That is not the question you should be asking, little Sól."

_ That is not the question you should be asking  _ inner-Buffy echoed in petulant sarcasm.  _ You just love this, don't you? Preening away on your fiction-born throne while I grit my teeth and take your cues.  _ "What's my final task?" she asked, done with it all. If Dru wanted to tell her anything else she could damn well spit it out, because she was  _ not  _ going to beg for it.

Drusilla rolled her eyes, then did it again the opposite way, seeming distracted by the sensation. "The question is," she said playfully, "' _ what shall we put on all those empty pages?' _ A final task, then. The little people tell me a unicorn has been sighted in the north-west woods. Bring me his head and his heart. Tonight."

_ Gulp. _ And also, not-gulp? It wasn't cutting Angel in half, or murdering someone, or making a deal that trapped herself somehow… but could she really slaughter a  _ unicorn? _ There'd been one on her favourite pencil case, in elementary school; pearly-white with gold foiled hooves and horn, a wreath of flowers around its neck. She'd named it Moontail. Which, really, she could have done better. Anyway, the terribly baptised Moontail should not be beheaded. "Question?" she asked. "Is this an 'alive or dead' scenario?"

Drusilla threw back her head and laughed, whispy and ringing like a bird's call. "Yes, slayer. Alive  _ or  _ dead. And I would hurry, if I were you. These late days are short and long."   


Nodding tightly, she retreated from the room.

  
  
  


"Slay a unicorn," Spike said, appearing beside her again as soon as she turned the first corner of hallway. Cocking his head to one side in a musing fashion, he added, "Not quite what I was expecting."

"It's a virginity test, isn't it?" she said dryly. "Part of her whole 'demoralise Buffy' schtick? I know she's like, ancient, but someone  _ really _ needs to point out to her that society has moved on from the days when a woman's value depended on some invented belief about the shape of her vaginal entrance. What am I, the Madonna she needs to prove unclean?"   


She may have had other ideas in the night about just what  _ 'swelling at the touch of true love and happiness'  _ meant in everyday lingo, but perhaps that was simplifying and smuttifying things too far… medieval beliefs and medieval curses (and tales). She stopped walking, staring sidelong at Spike.  _ "Angel  _ has outdated ideas about the purity of women, doesn't he?" she asked quietly.   


He stared back at her in sardonic silence.   


"I know, I know, you told me so, long, long ago." She turned her face away and resumed walking, an uncomfortable heat rolling through her.  _ Ideas enough that Dru's using them to lower me in his eyes. _ Well, she had recoiled at the thought of being corralled into the pen of his 'destiny', so, good?  _ But what if… _ it was supposed to be enough to make him want to stay? God, his ability to do good in her world wasn't dependent upon her fucking fucking history. Unless, it was, because souls were safe when keeping company with 'debased whores'.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist," Spike said with a short bark of ill-humoured laughter. "It's not a sodding virginity test."

She raised her eyebrows at him;  _ go on? _

"It's an assassination," he said flatly.   


"By… unicorn?"

"Ever seen the real thing? Not that bloody My Little Pony over-the-rainbow shite they show on tv."

"Big white horse, uni horn between the eyes?"   


He chuckled darkly. "Maybe in some places. Round here… a certain bastard's ideas about women aren't the only thing too old-fashioned for comfort." Adopting a disturbingly watcher-ly tone of British, he recited with a degree of fondness,  _ "A unicorn _ , so sayeth the bestiary,  _ is a ferocious beast, which hath the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and the body of a horse. He cuts down his opponents with the mighty sword upon his head, and all are made to tremble at his mighty roar." _ The fondness faded. "Seen one once. Summat like a cross between a rhinoceros and a billy goat. And once was enough. I'd say it's been nice knowing you, but…" He grinned, suddenly cocksure and bouncy in a way that was too close to overacted to be natural.   


He looked like he was about to flake and skip away on her, the cheat. "What about the whole virgin thing?" she asked quickly. "If… if one happened to be one." Fuck, why was she embarrassed?   


It was Spike’s turn to come to a sudden halt, turning to stare up at her with a multitude of expressions flickering across his face before he (predictably) landed on scorn. "You didn't?" he asked, shaking his head in disapproval. "Christ, you poor bitch. You really bloody waited for him, didn’t you?"

Ah. There was the drive to her embarrassment. "No!" she spat, voice full of flustered outrage.   


"Oh, so you're not a virgin?" he slapped back at her instantly and insincerely, his ears now  _ too _ pointy in eagerness and his light-stepping feet too sharp.

"Yes, but-" She set her own feet down firm and balanced, and turned to point a jabbing finger into his stupid wolfish face. "There is  _ nothing  _ wrong with being a virgin, or not being one, or any degree in between, thank you very much. I know you missed the memo here in ye land of pigeon post and candlelight, but it's the twenty-first century now, Spike, and my sexuality is none of your goddamn business."

"You taking women's studies at that college of yours, slayer?" he asked with candid curiosity, then straightened his head. "Anyway, you're right. Sleep with who you want, or don't. Just think it's a damn shame you've been cloistering yourself away on the say-so of some possessive bloody wanker who scrubbed any-"

"I haven't!" she growled. "I just… haven't happened to jump that bridge yet. It's no big deal." Okay, so maybe it had a  _ little _ to do with Angel. A lot, at first. Later, in a surge of impatient defiance, there'd been Jeremy, but he'd been eaten before they made it that far… and Derek, who had turned out to be a flesh-eating lizard-man, and Eli (graduation; eaten), and Matt (cut and literally ran when her job rudely interrupted their night out), and somewhere along the way, she had accepted that second dates were never going to happen for a slayer on the hellmouth, and adopted a pattern of rotational flirting that meant little. Hell, Charming was beating any man in Sunnydale on the dates-with-Buffy ranking, and how sad was that? And as often as she'd considered just getting the hurdle over with via an overnight fling (she'd certainly had her offers)... maybe  _ she _ was a little old-fashioned, because she kinda wanted her first time to mean something. There had to be  _ some _ normal rites of passage that didn't become complete miserable disasters when she attempted them.   


Spike had dropped his gaze, looking, for once, like she'd thrown him solidly from his usual eclectic rhythms and into uncertain silence. Another beat, then he slid into motion casually to resume walking. "Try it if you like," he said lightly. "The virgin/unicorn thing. I quote, so don't go pointing those fists at me for it,  _ The unicorn is a passionate creature, and unable to resist suckling at the bared breasts of a chaste maiden, followed by-"  _ his jaws opened in an amused grin, _ "conducting himself familiarly with her. At this stage it can be safely captured. _ Been wondering if that's where they come from, seeing there's no tell of unicornesses. Fancy birthing a mutant rhino colt?"   


"Oh, gross, Spike," she said, pulling a face of extreme disgust, before it twisted into annoyance. "Why can't anything here just be nice and simple and pretty like it's supposed to be? I want the My Little Pony version with flowers in its hair and a cutie mark on its butt, dammit. Can't I change it somehow? Write it down, or- or sing it a song, or  _ something?" _ Not that she was so sure about that, in honesty, because what would Drusilla  _ do _ with a pencil case worthy unicorn? Nothing good, certainly.   


"You want to be the one to slay The Last Unicorn?" He cocked his head again. "They  _ are _ white, so perhaps if you're drunk and squinting hard enough. It worked for the Tudors."

She gave him a frosty look. "Alright. So I'm slaying the randy mutant rhinoceros." Slaying she could do. Enslaving an innocent creature and handing it over to the enemy as payment… would have been a problem. She waved at her ankle-length dress of stiff velvet. "Where can I find a less cumbersome dress? Or pants?"

His face tightened into a look of leery indecision.   


_ Oh yes, Spike, you haven't and won't help me at all. _ It was beginning to feel like they were locking horns on a flimsy tightrope, afraid to look down and find out whether safe ground was one foot away or a deadly fall. "Do you want to sit around here all day with me complaining about clothing, or come and watch me get assassinated by the evil unicorn like I'm supposed to?" she snapped. They were almost at her bedroom.   


He relaxed his ears, nodding slightly. "Get your sword then. You won't find a better one of them laying about."

_ How did you…?  _ Sneaky, skulking spy-wolf. Marching into her room, she checked the sword's seat in its scabbard, then strapped the belt around her waist. 


	12. Task the Third

Snow lay in a smooth blanket before the rising sun, sparkling like powdered glass in a million fraudulent shades of warm light. Later it was like to turn to slushy mud that would soak and cake up his coat if he was dumb enough to sit in it, but this fluffy white stuff presented no problem to the stone-toughened and fur-surrounded pads of his feet.   


They travelled swiftly, him at the smooth lope he could maintain from border to border of this tiny world without undue effort, her at a fast walk. The north-west woods were not far; much too close, indeed, for a unicorn to be allowed to wander, so it was good that she should take care of it before it began to pose a nearer threat. Unless it took care of her first. He had not overstated his opinion of the beast; they were huge, and they were fast, and they brandished a bleeding  _ sword  _ as part of their anatomy.   


She wore a pair of plain buckskin pants, a jerkin and shirt, dark umber boots, all borrowed from the room Hansel had abandoned when he went treasure hunting last month. Her own sword hung at her left hip; the strange sacking bag she'd arrived with was across her back, now carrying the rope she'd insisted on bringing along on the off chance that the unicorn they hunted matched her childhood dreams more than nightmares. She did not look at all like a safe bet. Yet he knew better. The very plainness of her garb, the offhand way she was distracted by the beauty of the snow; these were the morning's disguise, and it would not have surprised him in the least if she later flung them aside and became a golden-furred lioness to fight this foe in the traditional way. It felt like that sort of day.   


And it was the last one. So perhaps he had not wanted any part of it because then this would be over. Whatever this was. 

  
  


There was both a brusqueness and a fluctuating hesitancy to Spike as they walked, and she began to suspect his latest mood had as much to do with her rapidly approaching departure as it did any qualms about the unicorn. He had not, after all and for whatever reason, been able to bring himself to announce whether or not he wanted her to succeed.  _ Make up your mind, Spike. Time's running out. _ His warring emotions over Dru and Angelus obviously ran closer to the bone than any wish to see her fall; he'd brushed such details aside quickly enough back at the factory those years ago.  _ You're going to have to face the truth eventually, wolfie, with or without Angel. _ And then what? Get used to being a lone wolf, she supposed. Maybe she was being uncharitable; Drusilla might decide she wanted him after all once Angel was gone. As if that would be charitable. An idle pat on the head from the omnipotent ruler while trapped in a role he didn't seem to have asked for.   


The first trees of a forest were just ahead, dark, gnarled branches stretching away under a whipped cream topping of snow. "This us?" she asked as Spike slowed to a halt, his narrowed eyes scanning the forest.

"Yes."   


_ Brusque Spike is brusque.  _ She turned to face him fully, then found it too confronting for the suggestion she was about to table and turned her head back towards the trees. "When I leave," she said, her voice carefully toneless, "you could come with us."

His muzzle jerked up at her, eyes widening before becoming even more shrewdly assessing.   


"I mean, if you felt like it. If you wanted to go watch the soccer or something…"

Suspicion, offence, icy rage, and a fleeting glimpse of something cornered and desperate crashed like storm surge behind the blue-yellow-grey of his eyes, then he blinked and turned back to the forest, curling his lip into a scoffing sneer that hid the shape of it. "Don't think they let dogs in."

"Maybe you wouldn't be. It's fairy-tale-world magic, right? So it might not work there." She saw an argument coming, and rushed on, "And we- That girl Amy, the one who was helping the mayor? She turned herself into a rat once, and the techno-pagan duo managed to turn her back. Although, she might have lived longer as a rat… Anyway. I'm sure they could, um, undog you."

"Yes, and then I could eat them, and all your little friends and neighbours, too," he said, sarcasm spitting harshly. "In the business of adding vampires to the world, are you? Or have you forgotten,  _ slayer?" _ He turned back to her, piercing yellow eyes to the fore and harder than his tone.   


She met his stare with her own, tight and silently immovable. After a long moment, she murmured, "No. I haven't forgotten. And I wouldn't let you hurt my friends." _ But there's a lot more people than them in the world…  _ She broke away, looking down. Okay, so maybe she hadn't fully thought this through. Or thought at all.  _ Think about it, then _ . "I did once make a deal," she said quietly. "'You help me escape, I take Angel far away from Dru until you can leave town.' I don't remember putting any statute of limitations on that…"

His snarl-ready look faded into a tiny, sad smile. "Don't strain your blonde brain trying to make your illogic logic work for me, pet," he said almost kindly. "I'm not coming." In a mutter that was hard to pin clearly as either regret or excuse, he added, "Not leaving Dru."   


_ Even now? _ Unaccountably, his refusal sunk all achy in her chest. If there was someone here who didn't deserve the loyalty they were being shown, it certainly wasn't Angel. "Okay," she said apologetically, then lifted her head to the forest. "Man-eating unicorn time."

  
  


Canine (or maybe it was vampire) enhanced nose taking point, Spike crept through the forest ahead of her in a sinuous gliding of his fine-boned, long legs. His feet were muted whispers on the thin layer of snow that had reached the ground, leaving a thin trail of overlaid paw prints she tried to keep her rather louder feet to. He had sworn his wounded one was back to normal; it didn't appear to be impeding his movement at all.   


"It's been through here," he murmured, pausing to sniff closer at a trunk beside the path. "This morning. We got a plan when we catch up to it, or…?"

"Sword. Sword is the plan," she said. He nodded calmly. "Although…" Reaching into her bag, she felt around for the not-grandmother's forgotten apple. "I was just wondering if this could be any use?"   


At the sight of it, Spike froze into a tense, icy statue of a wolf (figuratively). In a very low voice that rumbled with a sinister growl of warning, he asked, "Where did you get that?"   


She turned her hand, looking at the apple herself. "It came with the dress. Why the wigout?"   


"That’s a real apple," he said in the same dark voice. "They're illegal. Death on the spot to any traitor to the crown caught in possession of one."

"Why? I mean, your Snow White's already dead, technically." She searched him for any bounce off into their familiar banter-arguing, but found only flashing danger signs.

"Doesn't matter," he growled. "It's the weapon that took her down." Fluid as rippling silk, he began to circle her, wary malevolence charging the air to prickle up the hairs on the back of her neck.   


"Spike- This is stupid," she insisted, turning to keep her eyes on him and shoving the apple back into her bag. "I wasn't going to try and  _ use _ it on her. I forgot I even had it. And as screwed-up as it is, I don't think  _ taking her down _ would be unambiguously in the public good around here."   


He said nothing, watching her every movement of hand and foot with eyes that were fixed and intent in a very disturbing way, and wholly unlike his own.   


"Spike?" she asked with a quaver, refusing to let her fingers curl into hostile fists but knowing they were ready all the same. The foreleg she had earlier eyed critically with concern for him became a bullseye target, the weak point her foot would aim to cripple him by if he came at her. Which right now felt very, very likely.   


And then a thundering roar shook the air, and in a minor earthquake of pounding feet, the unicorn was upon them.   


Its smooth-haired coat was as white as the snow its thunderous steps shook from the trees, and somewhere in the back of her mind she registered that it must have snuck up on them in its perfect, pristine camouflage. A millionth of a second later she was reconsidering that opinion; it moved so fast that it could have been a hundred yards away when it began its rush.   


Hot, bellowing breath on her heels, she dove sideways for the nearest tree, around its trunk, between the next two, then leapt and swung onto an overhead branch that dipped a little precariously under her weight. The obstacle of the trunks kept her a hair's breadth ahead of a gleaming white sword almost as long as her own, and the unicorn's angry black eyes took in her position above before it looped awkwardly around the base of her tree and tore back the way it had come with an equine snort. Fleshy, triple-toed little feet kicked up sprays of snow and dirt as it turned.   


It didn't seem like it would have any trouble outpacing a sprinting wolf.  _ I should let it catch you for turning on me, you jerk. _ Except, something had felt very, very wrong about that whole scene. And the unicorn was only keeping her on ice while it rounded him up; it could probably push her tree over as soon as it wanted to, and she was no faster than a wolf at full clip. And most of all,  _ we were in the middle of something, you asshole demon-rhino. _ She leapt down and ran after it.   


Spike had obviously had the same thought she had; twenty-five yards down the path they’d been following, his splayed paws were clinging to a thick branch halfway up a low-spreading oak tree, while the demon-rhino (which she refused to think of as a unicorn) knocked the lower branches from its way with scraping kicks of its forelimbs.   


Stopping beside the thickest nearby tree, Buffy slid her bag from her shoulder and lowered it to the ground quietly. Not that the demon-rhino was likely to hear her over all the roaring and gnashing of teeth and tree-stomping it was doing. She drew her sword with a whisper of cold steel, set her grip comfortably, then shouted at the demon-rhino, "Hey! Ugly!"   


One of its deer-like ears flicked in her direction briefly, then it slammed another foot at the tree.

_ Rude much? _ Crouching to feel through her bag again, she grabbed the apple and hefted it in her palm, then threw it as hard as she could at the creature's head.   


The apple hit it just below the eye, splattering into several pieces on impact. The demon-rhino tossed its head in irritation, then turned to look at the fallen apple pieces, sniffing and snorting. A long tongue came out to lick the side of its mouth, then it lowered its head and lipped up the broken apple.   


_ Huh.  _ Not quite what she'd had in mind, but promising all the same. 

_ Or not… _ The beast crunched and swallowed, looking over at her at last, then it snorted once more and charged.   


She held her ground until it was almost on top of her, then dodged behind the tree, sweeping her sword out at the creature in passing. Its stupid forehead-sword swung to meet her, clunking with a sound like bone against her blade, then it was past and pivoting to come at her again. She stuck close to her friendly tree trunk, ready to duck around it in either direction, and wondering how on earth she was going to get far enough inside the creature's range to do any real damage.   


This time she moved as it charged, trying to put her quicker turning to use and catch the rear end of it as it thundered for the tree. It was too fast, past before she could catch it with her sword, and slammed its horn against the tree in a ground-shaking sideswipe as it went. Twice more she dodged in a circle away from it, getting nowhere and sure it was learning from each attempt. Okay, this tree dodging wasn't going to work. And it was already coming again. She went up, onto the nearest branch.

The demon-rhino roared again, then scraped the ground with its paw-hoof like a fighting bull. She thought about climbing higher, in case it reared up to pluck her from her branch with its horribly carnivorous teeth, but discarded the idea in favour of hanging on tighter as it lowered its head and charged at the tree's trunk.

And stuck there. A handspan of its horn drove into the wood with an ear-splitting crack, shaking her wildly on her branch, then it bellowed furiously and began thrashing and kicking as the wood held it tight.   


Its back was right below her. Tossing fortune to serendipity, she jumped.

Her feet landed on its withers, sliding down until she sat astride it with her knees gripping tight. Her left hand grabbed a handful of sharp white mane in time to yank on it for balance as the creature flung itself left and right; her right pivoted her sword around to face forwards. Then she pulled it back, and lunged forward to drive it into the side of the thing's neck.   


Its hide gave easily enough, then she felt thick, ropey neck muscles slow and turn the point of her blade away from the breathing and blood-supplying parts she'd aimed for. It roared again, the sound more shrieky, and she used the hilt of her half-buried sword as a second handhold while it began bucking, almost sending her over its neck into the tree. As soon as its rear feet hit the ground and didn't immediately bounce off again, she yanked the sword out and tried again, aiming higher up under its chin.   


This time she hit softer flesh, her sword sliding cleanly in straight to the hilt and possibly out the other side, and she kept her grip tight to let her bodyweight shove it around and widen the wound with every thrash the creature made. The hilt tore its way down an inch or two, then with a purely incensed roar, the demon-rhino dropped one knee and flung itself into a full body roll. Pushing off it frantically, she landed hard on her back on the ground beside it as its legs beat up at the air. With a final, groaning crack, the tree trunk split wider and released its horn.   


As Buffy scrambled back spider-fashion, the demon-rhino clambered up onto its weird feet, snorting and snarling over a gnashing growl. Her sword still protruded from its neck, and although three long streams of crimson blood ran down its white neck, it only looked angered by them. A scaly little tail like a mangy pig's swished furiously at its rear quarters, and the wet shine of its jagged, bone-crushing teeth was visible with each movement of its mouth.   


_ And I'm supposed to bare my 'pure' breast to it? _

With a catalysing burst made of every suppressed, smouldering rage of the last week, Buffy was  _ done. _ Done with  _ it _ , and these stupid tasks, and this fucked up place, and every goddamn thing in it. But mostly, in that second, done with this despicable demon-bred thing right in front of her for having the impertinence to be called a  _ unicorn _ .   


It charged at her from a scant few steps away, horn lowered, still snarling, and she charged right back at it with her own enraged shout, diving low and at an angle, hoping to avoid its ridiculous forehead-sword and catch hold of her own, but past caring whether it skewered her or not.   


She missed both its sword and hers, skimming past its turned cheek to slam her shoulder into the front of its in a solid barge. It weighed a literal ton; she didn't. The demon-rhino began turning in her direction, momentum unaffected by her attack, but she'd grappled for any part of it on impact, hands bumping down its foreleg to the thinner spot at its ankle and finally grabbing hold there. Throwing her weight back towards its hindquarters, she yanked on its ankle with all her might.   


Thrown unexpectedly from its balance by the disappearance of one foot, the demon-rhino went down. Hard. The opposite foreleg tangled beneath it, and it hit the ground bruisingly with that side of its chest.   


A sharper, higher snarl filled the snippet of audio space vacated when the demon-rhino's roar cut out briefly, and a flash of dingier, shaggier white fur drove at the creature's rear ankles, sinking his teeth into one near the joint and hanging on to tug and tear at it viciously.   


Buffy let go of the foot she had to make another grab for the hilt of her sword, but the creature's head swung towards her as it struggled to right itself, forcing her to dodge back. Snow, woodchips and mud flew as its feet kicked wildly, and a muffled, pained yelp came from Spike as one foot found him.   


_ How fucking dare you! _ She had an argument to conclude with that wolf. Hell, she had a  _ fight _ to conclude with him, two years burning and ready to detonate with the wait. Screaming in rage, she drew back a fist and punched the demon-rhino in its giant not-quite-horsey ribcage.   


The beast  _ screamed,  _ the sound horrendous and momentarily deafening. Its head swung at her again, so she ducked away from the horn and hit it with another fist, right behind its cheek. The scream changed, and the head recoiled, so she hit it again, punching and driving a knee up at its chest where its stupid heart should be that stupid Drusilla expected her to fetch so that she could rescue stupid Angel from this stupid land. Behind her Spike still snarled, and maybe she did too, and the unicorn screamed and roared and tried to pull away, and she kept hitting it until finally she could climb onto it and grab the hilt of her sword. She wrenched it free in a spurt of blood, then grabbed hold of the demon-rhino's stupid horn and used it to twist its head back as she carved through its throat.   


The scream drowned into a choking gurgle, and the beast's legs began kicking in a directionless, spasmodic fashion. She kept cutting until there was nothing left to cut, then stayed kneeling on the creature's shoulder, holding tight to its horn, until the quivering muscles beneath her finally faded away to flaccid stillness in a pool of red blood that steamed in the frosty air. A dull  _ thunk _ sounded as Spike released his foot, and she could hear him panting in the new quiet. Still breathing fast, she looked at the dead-eyed head she held up, then uncurled her fingers one by one and dropped it to the ground, standing her sword in beside it. She wanted to brush her hair back from her face, but both of her hands were slick with blood and rapidly becoming sticky.   


"You okay?" she asked. When he didn't answer, she turned to look over her shoulder, wiping her hands on her pants, and found him standing a few feet back from the demon-rhino's body, watching her with something that mingled awe, hunger and fear into a sort of shocked stupefaction.   


At her look, he shook himself with a little shiver, then told her, "Yes. Yeah, fine."

"Okay," she said weakly, and climbed off the demon-rhino's body.

It was covered in burns. Fist-sized hollows were razed into its ribs and chest, their edges charred and scorched. The shoulder she'd knelt on was singed back to skin, the black ash of its fur sticking to angry red burns.

She frowned down at it for a minute, then turned to Spike wonderingly. "How…?"   


He shrugged, apparently unbothered by the detail. Perhaps it was ordinary fairy-tale weirdness for him.   


Okay, well… she would think about it later. Because right now- She broke into a wide grin, looking down at the decapitated body at her feet. The unicorn was dead _. _ She had accomplished the final task. "I did it!" she told Spike triumphantly, pointing a finger at the thing's head. Just in case he hadn't noticed. A bubble of laughter rose from her throat, swooping in on a wave of post-battle relief and success.   


"Yeah," he panted, moving closer to study the body. "That you certainly did." He'd caught her smile, the edges of his lolling, bloodstained muzzle pulling up in a grin.   


On impulse, she dropped into a crouch and threw her arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug. "Thank you."

Spike stiffened instantly, mouth snapping shut with an audible click of teeth.   


Right, right, they didn't do hugs. Or any other prosecutable touching. Cheeks burning, she carefully removed her arms from his rigid shoulders and went to pull away.   


The underside of his jaw came down on the back of her shoulder, stopping her retreat and pressing her back towards him. Moving more slowly, she resettled her arms around him lightly and held herself very still. His chest moved against hers with each of his breaths, and slowly the tension began to ease from his stony posture.

"Don't you go burning me," he muttered.   


She twitched back again as the words processed; she hadn't even thought of that.

"You're not," he added quickly.   


Letting out the breath she'd snatched in, she relaxed her arms against the thick fur of his ruff. "Sorry," she whispered. "And, thank you. For all of it."

"Didn’t do anything, slayer," he sing-songed quietly.   


"Of course," she said, with a tiny, closed-lip smile. "Nothing at all." The fingers of her right hand stroked over a little patch of his fur gently, smoothing the long hairs out, then worked their way deeper to rub the softer, fluffier fur she found underneath. She felt him relax further, part of his weight leaning comfortably into her shoulder, and, inexplicably, her eyes started prickling, a warning tingle of approaching tears. She blinked the sensation away and patted him with a little more indulgence, because this was a goodbye hug, she felt it now, and leaving him behind here was going to tinge her victory to bittersweetness. There was something buried in his fur under one of her fingers, maybe a little bit of stick, or the dried stalk of a leaf, and she felt for the surface of it through all of his fluff to pull it free. It was bigger than she'd thought, attached to another bit, or-

He moved like an eel, slithering backwards out of the circle of her arms and out of reach in an instant, hollow, cold air replacing his warm body.

She narrowed her eyes, standing up and folding her arms over her chest slowly. "What was that?" she asked, ambiguously aiming the question at his retreat and the thing she'd felt and their entire hug.   


He looked away, into the trees, deliberating. "'S just my necklace," he said in wary admission. "Not for your hands."

Collar _. _ Spike was wearing a  _ collar _ . "And what was that earlier?" she demanded, pushing the advantage while she had him conflicted, sensing she was holding several pieces of the same puzzle. "You were going to  _ attack _ me."

He pressed lips together and huffed out a quiet growl, turning his face further away. "Warned you, slayer. I protect the queen."

"By turning into possessed-psycho-wolf at the sight of a potentially threatening object? That wasn't you."

"What would you know?" he said in a low growl.

"I know," she told him, quiet and firm. "You're smarter than that. You- you  _ prowl _ differently from that." She sighed, glanced down at the burnt and bloodied body of the unicorn, then looked back over at him and dropped her hands to her sides, hooking her thumbs in her pockets. "You used to be more… more  _ alive _ , Spike."

He snorted a breath of a dark ironic chuckle. "Yeah, well you used to be a bit more careful to stay that way, so I guess we've all changed," he snarked, indicating the unicorn with a nod of his chin.

_ Oh no you don't. This is about you, buster. _ "She put that collar on you, didn’t she? To force you to be her guard dog?"

His face darkened bitterly. "Doesn't make a difference," he muttered. "I protect her because she's Dru. She wants to dress me in baubles, I'll wear anything she desires. Proudly."

"Is she? Drusilla?" she pressed.

He glared back hard, warning her she was over the line, and she dropped her gaze again briefly in apology, toying with her lip.

_ Why _ , she wanted to ask. Nothing about him had ever given her reason to think he wouldn't protect Drusilla with everything he had entirely under his own initiative. She'd assumed that was what he'd meant when he'd named it as his job. Maybe things had changed more than she realised; perhaps he  _ had _ had enough and tried to leave. "You couldn't come with me if you wanted to, could you?" she asked quietly.   


He sniffed, grim and icy cold. "Well I don't want to, so you'll have to live with not knowing," he snarked. "Get your shit. Long walk back." Turning on his heel, he stalked off to wait at a distance.   


_ Oh, Spike.  _ He hadn't tried to leave beforehand. The truth was there in the tight, tense steps of his feet as he walked away now; in all the bitter resentment lacing his unproud ownership of that 'necklace'. It must have hurt to be needlessly collared by it. 

  
  


The unicorn's heart was secreted away inside a ribcage large enough for her to have curled inside, and butchering her way into it alone made her very glad of the whole superstrength perk. Thick, blackish jelly slugs of clotted blood glooped from stilled veins and arteries as she hacked them out of the way, adding their texture to the whole gruesome horror scene of red sprayed and smeared blood, black burnt and charred flesh, white snow and the occasional somehow still-pristine areas of a coat that felt softer than velvet and denser than chinchilla fur. Drenched to her elbows and sure there was more on her face and in her hair, Buffy  _ felt _ like the villain of whatever tale this was. Then she shook the feeling off as the sullen, tired grump it was. Besides, she was more like Snow White's merciful huntsman, slaying a beast for its organs to save… well, someone  _ from  _ Snow White. Close enough. She reached down and drew out the heart.   


She'd half expected something evenly red and cartoon-heart shaped, or perhaps a giant apple, but what came from the unicorn was a gory, fleshy lump of squishy flesh little different from the sheep's hearts on display at Sunnydale's butcher. Except, basketball-sized. After slicing it free from all its blood-carrying tubes, she wiped her sword off as best she could on the slushy snow and a clean patch of fur, then slid it back into its sheath. Hefting the heart with a grimace, she picked the head up by its horn and carried it over to where her bag still lay at the base of the now rather battered tree. Dropping the heart inside it, she tied it safely closed.

"Sorry," she told the unicorn with a lopsided shrug. Then she shouldered her bag, picked up the head again, and went to join Spike. 


	13. Adjudication

Spike dragged his heels in fits and dashes, pacing restlessly from one side of the road to the other in a circular kerfuffle of disquietude. His neck felt hot, and he couldn't decide whether to attribute this to some delayed effect of being touched by little miss fire-hands, or of his collar's latest intrusive takeover, or whether he was just flustered and heating it himself with his exertion. And maybe a smidgen of shame.   


Slayer fucking pitied him, the cruel bitch, and it stung right down to his bones. Had she mocked and jeered he could have answered in kind, but her sorry, sympathetic face invited only silent humiliation. He hated her, he newly remembered; hated her righteousness and her holier-than-thou blinkers, hated the way she insisted on acting as though he were something he was not. Doggishness had been affecting him; he could now write it boldly over his behaviour of the past week. He was not always himself in this collar, and thus canine longings for the touch of warm hands or to lay his head at someone's feet were excusable. But he still hated her. As he should. Good.   


He wasn't talking to her, and after being coldly ignored the few times she tried to start a conversation, she gave up and plodded along in silence. She still smiled hopefully at him whenever he accidentally caught her eye, however, so he alternated between ranging far out ahead (where her contemplative, x-ray eyes burnt into the back of his skull) and trailing behind (where he felt swept up in the river of her blood and sweat and Buffy scent, which was… confusing).   


From behind, he watched her adjust her hold on the unicorn's head again, no longer bothering to pull a disgusted face as more wetness seeped from it into her tunic. She looked a right mess, smeared and streaked from head to toe with black and red, and he itched to tease her for it, to try and run it down into the territory of an embarrassing state of presentation rather than the banner of her absolute brilliance that it was. But he wasn't talking to her.   


He sped up to jog past her again, moving slower than he would have preferred, due to the bruising ache left down one side of his ribs by a flying foot-hoof. He could cover it well enough for now by restricting his gait, but it was going to be painfully stiff come morning. But she'd be well gone by then, and he could find himself a comfortable corner to sleep it away in peace.   


As he drew level with her, she clucked her tongue, loud and sharp, jerking his eyes unwittingly to hers. As soon as they met, she pulled a face and poked her tongue out at him, then tossed her head and turned to face forwards again, smoothing her expression to perfect innocence.   


A grin tugged at his lips, and he tightened his jaw to jog ahead without revealing it. She should not be allowed to be so many things. 

  
  


The castle appeared ahead of them down the road as the sun sunk away, all lit up with its bottled fairies-for-hire and beginning to bustle with the flood of arrivals to the evening’s ball. Buffy stopped beside the side of the road, set the head down on the grass there, and stretched out her arms.   


"I haven't got a dress to wear," she said musingly. "Is she going to try and void my presentation if I walk in there like this?"   


He looked her over steadily at last, from the gore staining her clothes to the smear of ash on one cheek, from the side of her head glinting gold in the last light of sunset to her expression of wearied, tempered-steel animosity. "No," he told her honestly. Anyone would have to be a complete idiot to attempt to cross her right now.   


"Wise choice," she muttered under her breath, towards the castle. Then she looked down at him and pulled a lopsided frown of apology. "You've got blood around your neck. I mean, you've got some down your front too, but I've rubbed it onto the back of your ruff."

He shrugged; it didn't seem to matter anymore. All the same… no sense in courting trouble for nothing. Crossing to the ditch on the far side of the road, he dropped shoulder-first into the slushy brown snowmelt there and rubbed and rolled around until the earlier heat on his neck was replaced with a shivery chill. Standing up, he shook himself fully, removing the worst of the dripping water, then turned a scornful eye on the girl now studiously looking down to cover her grin, and thought about moving up beside her to shake again. But he wasn't talking to her. Even to spray her with mud. Except that he just had spoken to her. He sighed to himself, and padded back across to stand waiting for her to be ready.

Buffy picked up the head again, glanced at the castle, and asked, "Is this where you run away?"   


She was taunting him, clearly; trying to dare him into sticking around so she wouldn't have to walk into that place alone. He'd have called her on it, and on the hopeless state of her relationships if she was relying on an evil wolf for moral support, but he'd already made up his mind. "Nah. Figured I'd come and see the show," he said casually.   


"Oh." He'd surprised her, at any rate. Surprised her into a new lift to her jaw and sense of energy to her stance. "Okay, then," she said with a smile gleaming in her eyes.

  
  


She thought the doorman might try to stop her, but he was as reservedly polite as always, nodding at her with a vague smile as she reached the entrance. Although, she noted, he did neglect his usual offer to take her bag. Her heartbeat thumped tangibly in her chest like she was marching into battle, which she supposed she kind of was, because, requested tasks achieved or no, Drusilla was almost certain to try and overturn her at the finish line. 

The pounding, drumming sound grew, sped, became more than her heartbeat and footsteps as she strode through the entrance hall, overriding the live music in the hall beyond and silencing the surrounding crowd as their glasses shook with the reverberations of it;  _ Disney effect _ . It wasn't a song she had lyrics for, but it was the one she  _ knew _ , knew without knowing; older than time, older than words, the song before songs, born at the dawning of red-blooded life and echoing down through the generations to fill her now with the very antithesis of the cold death she went to face. She was the living creature who hunted death, and this was her anthem.   


She marched into the ballroom and the crowd rippled away, clearing her path to the petitioner's area and the whole middle of the room besides, the people wide-eyed, agitated, excited by the echo of her living song in their own arteries and disturbed by the symbol of mortality in her arms. All eyes were upon her, and she felt those of the wolf who shadowed her heels ahead before them all.

Drusilla stood up from her throne, tall and pale as moonlight, and watched with inhuman stillness as Buffy came to a halt before her stage. The song faded away slowly, folding down to fit back inside her chest, where it played silent and ceaseless and belonging only to her again. The crowd watched in silence but for the rustling of anxious feet, and the band had long since given way. Angel was nowhere to be seen; maybe there was a dungeon after all.   


Buffy raised the unicorn's head in front of her, and an errant red drip fell from its neck-stump. She caught it on her pants with a shift of one foot and a silent prayer of thanks to her furry watcher for the knowledge that had just prevented her having to find out exactly what 'no unauthorised bloodshed' meant in practice.   


"I've finished your final task," she announced.   


Drusilla stared for a long moment more, then flicked her fingers at a waiting pageboy and pointed at the unicorn's head. Bowing, he stepped off the dais and came to collect it.

"Where is his heart?" Drusilla asked.   


"In my bag," Buffy answered, ducking out of its strap to hold it before her.

A second boy was summoned to take it from her.

"Very well." Drusilla swept her gaze over the crowd and raised her voice, including them in the proceedings, "This girl declared challenge to the kingdom. Under the power granted me by this crown I accepted that challenge." She appeared to be perfectly in her element (which was still too damn weird), and far too unruffled by Buffy’s entrance (although, Buffy had to concede that perhaps she'd been deaf to its soundtrack, disconnected from it as she was). 

Her eyes settled on Buffy again, and she recited calmly, " _ 'Three tasks, of my choosing, then you can name your prize from all that the kingdom has to offer.' _ You have completed the three tasks. Stand before me here at midnight to name your prize, and you may leave unharmed with it this night." Her lips stretched into a dead cold mockery of a sweet smile. "Oh, and, slayer? Name it fully; name it thrice. I would so hate to grant you the wrong object when you have served me so well."

Ah, there it was.  _ The devil in the detail.  _ It was almost a relief to have it out there. Almost. The almost where it wasn't.   


"Until then, I should go and clean myself up if I were you," Drusilla added disdainfully. "I shall not allow the impertinence of your filth in here any longer than I already have."

Buffy could take a hint when it came in flashing neon lights. With the most polite bow she'd given yet, she retreated from the room, head held stiffly and whispers upswelling in her wake. 

  
  


_ Name it fully. Name it thrice.  _ She walked swiftly and without attention, yet by some minor miracle was soon at her own bedroom door. Relenting to her fury at Drusilla in the smallest, most controlled degree possible, she closed the door behind herself quietly, then put her fist through the heavy oak of the bed's headboard. It helped.   


She almost avoided sitting on the bed in her slightly soggy and, yes, okay,  _ filthy _ clothing, but after connecting the fact that she was leaving this place in a few short hours and would never sleep in it again, she corrected herself and rolled across to the very middle of it.   


_ Huh. I'll miss you, ceiling.   
_

_ Angel, Angelus, Angelusus? Angelusie? Where are you, Giles, I need the conjugations of Angeles. Mule-king? Félix?  _ She laughed, the sound starting as a manic bark before winding down into a weary moan as she rubbed at her face. God, it was icky. She needed to find a bathtub. And a dress of some kind. The one she'd taken off this morning, perhaps. Was there a written code somewhere, setting out the expectations?  _ Later.  _ First, do the thinking thing. Now was not the time for extemporaneous...ness. Okay, no, that was it, she was finding a bath first. She'd get nowhere without clearing her head.    
  
  


Sneaking down to the warmer part of the castle, she eventually found a room holding a big iron tub with a hand pump tap over it. The water was cold, of course, but verging on bearably so; it must have come a long way through the castle in its pipes. Steeling herself, she picked up the soap from a small shelf and climbed in.

Verging on bearable was still too cold, and though she directed every bit of hot anger she could at the water, and even tried hitting it a few times, it seemed only to drown her attempts and refused to get any warmer. Shivering and with that tingly, raw feeling of hasty scrubbing, she jumped out and dove for towels. She was clean. Progress.   


Dry and goosebumpy and fidgeting on the spot for warmth, she put on the plain velvet dress from the morning and wrapped her hair in another towel. Her stomach had that dull, knotty feeling of too many skipped meals, and she thought back with an effort to identify the last time she'd eaten something. Bread. With Spike. On a grass verge in the autumn sun. Heaving a sigh, she headed back to her room, peeking into any that sounded uninhabited on the way. No dresses. Well, hers would have to do. It did disguise the stake tucked into her cleavage nicely.   


A clock down the hall read eleven pm, and she pouted at it in passing. Too much time, and not enough. One week in fairy should not be enough to overturn two years. 

  
  


Her door handle jiggled as she lay on her bed, and she sat up to watch it be nudged open, a quiet smile on her lips. He was predictable in some ways, at least.   


He slunk into the room, ears and tail low and twitchy with whatever arguments he'd come to have at.   


She saved him the bother. "I don't even know his name," she said with a silent breath of ironic laughter, her smile turning watery. "So if you've come to tell me how stupid I am for doing all this for a man who never even told me his real name…" She waved a hand. "The floor is yours. Advance away." She dropped her face into her hands, rubbing her eyes in pursuit of more awakeness and combing her fingers out through her drying hair, half an eye on Spike.

He swallowed, nose wrinkling briefly in distaste. "Liam," he said flatly. "The mighty Angelus was born Liam of Galway, son of a silk merchant." It was the truth, she was sure, in all of the bitter familiarity he made the words from.

She lifted her head sharply, staring at him, and he turned his sullen face away to begin pacing around the room. It was too small for him. Everything here was too small. "Why?" she asked.   


He didn't answer, intent suddenly on studying a patch of floor, pawing at the edge of the rug to investigate the underside. "Unless you fancy Charming," he said after a minute, in a stiff, false attempt at his usual wit. " _ Prince Charlie Chase Charming. _ Or that ruddy ruby apple. Ruby Apple Stone. Gotta be worth millions in the real world." He eyed the hole in the headboard in casual appraisal, then moved on to study the next rug.

"Why, Spike?" she asked again, gently.

"He doesn't bloody deserve you," he growled, then sat down on his haunches and licked at his teeth uncomfortably before finally turning his eyes back to her face. "And yes, you're a stupid, brainless bloody mug for falling for his shit." He looked down, lips lifting from his fangs in a warning sneer at the rug, then heaved a defeated sigh and met her eyes again. "But you deserve to get what you want. Fuck knows you've worked hard enough for it." A dull, gritted resentment swirled across his face.   


She reached a hand out, palm up, inviting him closer gently, answering the tug in her chest that urged her to touch him.   


After a second of wavering uncertainty, he rose and padded over cautiously, ducking under her hand to rest his head on her knees. Slowly and carefully, she stroked the top of his head, then worked her fingers along to feel the soft-looking fur on his pointy little ears.

"I've wanted to do this for the longest time," she whispered huskily.   


He snorted a quiet laugh, and leaned into her hand slightly, eyes half closed.

"Thank you," she whispered. "And I, um, might need one more favour from you."   


He looked up at her, cocking one eyebrow. The soft little triangle under her hand perked up with it.

"Am I going to be allowed inside in this?" she asked.   


He withdrew from her lap slowly, stepping back to consider her with a tilt of his head. "Know where you can find something safer, anyway," he said quietly. "Come on." He moved to the door.   


Right. Yes. Midnight must be rapidly nearing. She stood up, considered the room briefly, then picked up the Mule-King book and went to join him.

  
  


Spike led her around a corner and up a flight of stairs to another small turret room, this one filled with elaborate ball gowns on headless mannequins. He stopped in the doorway, fidgeting again.   


"I'll, ah, leave you to choose," he mumbled. "Know your way from here, or you need me to rustle up a maid? Yours is 'in discussions' with Charming."

_ Holy shit- _ She'd let the whole issue of Myrtle slip her mind in the face of all the others. And now she was… oh.  _ Oops.  _ She pursed her lips, heat rising in her cheeks. "That, umm, I didn't like, trap him into that, did I?"

Spike grinned. "Nah. It resets. He's got a trio of balls to show up to for her before he decides whether to nick off with her shoe or not."

She let out a tiny sigh of relief. "Good. Uh, yeah, I know my way."

"Okay," he said quietly, turning to go.

"You'll be there, won't you?" she asked quickly, afraid suddenly that he was going to vanish into the depths of the castle.   


He stopped and looked back. "Wouldn't miss it. Just, ah, maybe don't mention where you got that name."

She mimed sealing her lips, and with a nod and short grin, he trotted away.   


_ Pick a dress. _ Endless layers of very logical arguments and evidence were warring it out in the courtroom of her brain, and she let them rage back there while she perused the options. None of the gowns on display looked any better than another for fleeing across the kingdom, so she chose a yellowish one that would maybe sort of go with her hair (and looked nothing like Cinderella's blue one, nor Drusilla’s vampires-r-us black and red wardrobe. Or maybe that was Snow White's) and wriggled into it.   


_ You done up there, imaginary lawyers?  _ Nope; they hadn't even put together their closing statements. Rolling her eyes at herself, she squeezed the book down the back of her dress to sit unobtrusively over her spine, moved her stake to the ankle of her right boot, and shook her hair out into what she hoped was an acceptably windswept-heroine kind of thing. Besides, if Dru-Snow wanted her to look any better groomed, she should have supplied her with a brush and mirror. Then she strapped on her sword again, and made her way down towards the ballroom. 

  
  


Angel stood back in his spot on the dais, and he snapped to eager attention at Buffy’s entrance (as did the rest of the crowd).   


Buffy didn't want to look at him. Or at anyone. Eyes focused vaguely on the space between him and Drusilla on her throne, she stalked over to the petitioner's area and stood waiting, directing all of her attention down into looking poised and confident and not at all like the exhausted, hungry and mentally worn out girl she felt like. She couldn't see Spike, at a quick, unfocused scan of this end of the room, but he had to be nearby. He'd all but promised.   


Seconds ticked away while Drusilla slowly put away her needlework ( _ Really? _ Maybe she was making a voodoo doll or something) and took out a little silver watch. Music faded away, and the crowd's voice changed to a low buzz of excited whispers.   


Buffy counted her breaths in and out, slow and even. There'd been four minutes on the grandfather clock by the door when she walked in. Maybe three now. Drusilla was going to count them down, wasn't she?  _ Yep, figures.  _ Welp, she could wait.   


Angel was trying to get her attention without attracting too much of his own, and when she finally moved her eyes reluctantly over to him, he motioned at his firmly closed lips desperately.   


She moved her head in a tiny nod.  _ Got it. _ One way to stop him spilling before midnight, she supposed.   


A pale, liquid shadow slunk in through the dark little door beside the stage, to sit again where she'd first seen him here. She fought not to smile, nerves threatening to shove her off the rails into some sort of inane outburst if she had to stand here in polite silence much longer.

_ Oh god, what am I thinking… _   


Then Drusilla sat up straight, and set down her watch. Time. "Name it," she commanded into the newly complete silence.   


Buffy raised a hand to count each word out with a finger, and took a deep breath.  _ I'm sorry, Angel.  _ "Spike, William, Pratt," she answered, loud and clear.   


From the corner of her eye she saw his muzzle jerk up in shocked surprise as he sprung to his feet; Drusilla and Angel froze.

"Vampire, Wolf,  _ Hound, _ " she added, and would have continued,  _ the bloody, slayer-of-slayers _ , any of the many epithets she'd read, except that she knew she'd named him perfectly the first time, and this was just rubbing it in. Also, right then the clocks began to chime, a clanging tumult that impeded further speech.

Drusilla turned her head slowly to the side of her stage, staring at the wolf there in wide-eyed distress as the chiming ceased and every clock in the building began to ring out their twelve tolls for midnight.   


Spike’s shocked eyes slid from Buffy’s to Drusilla’s, then darted between both of them as the tolling continued. His lips were pressed tight.   


_ Please let this be the right thing…   
_

Angel was turning his head back and forth between all three of them, flabbergasted. As the twelfth toll faded away through the air, he opened his mouth, closed it again in surprise at being able to, then turned to Buffy and shouted, "No, it's-"

"Liam," she said over him. "I know."   


He froze in the half-step he'd taken towards her, brows coming down in confusion. Then turned back to the others, mouth opening and closing absently.   


The whisper-gallery was silent, and she could all but feel the intensity of their ears. She supposed they hadn't ever seen their queen so completely startled. She kept her eyes close on Drusilla, all earlier sensations of tiredness swept away by adrenaline in wary anticipation. Drusilla, though, seemed to have forgotten her, still staring at Spike with wide, anguished eyes.   


Drusilla shook her head slowly in negation, then turned to Buffy almost pleadingly.

Buffy glared back, coldly resolute.  _ No. _   


Closing her eyes in a tiny, sad nod of agreement, Drusilla turned back to Spike and beckoned him forth.   


On shaky legs, he went, crossing the stage to stand quietly before her throne. His tail hung down low, and another very rational qualm about her decision flickered under Buffy’s feet.

"I tried to keep you from this," Drusilla murmured to Spike. "But I was much too late, wasn't I?"

Buffy turned her face down to the edge of the stage, feeling horribly intrusive.   


"Dru-" Spike licked his lips, glancing down briefly. "I…"

"Shh!" she said. "You are hers. There is nothing to be done."   


Reaching down to his neck, she felt through his fur and then gave something a sharp jerk, prompting a quickly-stifled yelp from him. Tugging one broken end of the collar free, she tore it slowly from its home deep in his fur and unwound it from his neck, while he stood rigidly in place.   


Drusilla coiled the collar up into a circle, then climbed slowly to her feet and crossed to the very edge of the dais, where she beckoned Buffy closer.   


Buffy moved up to stand before her in burning silence, and after a long, searching look, Drusilla held the collar out to her.   


It was a length of dry blackberry cane, or something similarly flexible and covered in tiny spikes, most of them now trailing tufts of hair and more than a few dribbled with blood. Buffy accepted it with careful fingers, a simmering anger starting to rise again at the specifics of it.

Then Drusilla stepped away to the side of the stage and vanished through the door there, pulling her cloak close around her.   


Spike stared after her.   


Angel blinked back and forth a few more times, then hurried over to Buffy. She held up a hand to silence whatever he was about to say and told Spike, "Back courtyard thing. Twenty minutes."   


He blinked and turned to her slowly, a lost look on his face. Then he shook himself slightly and gave her a short, obedient nod, before his eyes drifted back to the door Dru had left by.   


Grabbing Angel's hand, Buffy tugged him from the room. 

  
  


He started protesting as soon as they were clear of the ballroom, a string of variations on, "Buffy, what the hell is going on?"

She ignored them, cheeks burning in guilty shame, and let go of his hand, sure he would keep following as she bolted for privacy. She took the main staircase from the foyer and ducked into the first room off its hallway, glad to find it empty so she wouldn't have to make a scene by forcibly throwing anyone out.   


Angel closed the door behind him, then dragged a chair over to hold the handle shut. "There," he said sharply. "Now,  _ what…?" _   


The flush in her cheeks grew, and she looked down at the floor, a lump rising in her throat. "I'm-  _ god, _ " she hissed, before breaking off to swallow hard and cross her arms over her chest. The room was beginning to swim in her eyes. This part of the aftermath of her decision she'd bluntly refused to think about ahead of time.   


"What did he do to you?" Angel growled tensely, sweeping across the room to take her upper arms in his hands.   


He was so  _ tall; _ such a long way up to force her ashamed eyes. She made herself do it, with an effort. "He didn't do anything," she said in a wobbly voice. "I'm so sorry, Angel. I- should have tried to warn you beforehand. Somehow. But it's not-"

"First there was that thing with the trolls - he was involved in that too, wasn't he?" Angel snarled, steamrolling over her. "I should have guessed. You'd never behave like that without being manipulated into it by that little freak-"

"What? No!" she protested, then tried to calm her voice. "Angel, listen-"

"Then I catch him outside your room, loitering about like he's up to no good, and does he leave when I order him to? No, he snarls back at me, as if-"   


"Stop!" she snapped. "Just- listen to me. Please."   


Angel did, surprised into silence by her volume. For a moment, anyway. "No, Buffy, you need to listen to me," he charged back in with. "Whatever he's done, we'll sort it out. Untangle all this mess. There's ways to change things, with her private book, we could- I can help you."   


She was beginning to feel squashed by the amount of pressure he was putting on her arms, and when he added a shake of his hands to it that rocked her on her heels, the shame swirling in her flipped over into anger. "Get your hands off me," she snarled.   


"You're not listening!" he insisted, and began to try to shake her again.   


Before she had moved to react, he was recoiling with a hiss, fangs leaping forth as he stumbled back with his hands raised. Curls of smoke coiled from them, and the smell of singed flesh filled the air.   


He turned his palms over to study them, then looked over at her in shock.

"Fire-skin Buffy. It's a thing," she said tightly, and rubbed at the bruised feeling on her arms. "Are you ready to listen now? I've only got a few minutes."

Fighting down his vampface, Angel nodded.  


"Have you read 'The Mule-King'?" she asked.   


"What-" He seemed about to argue, then glanced at her arms and reconsidered. "No, I don't think so. Or if I have, I don't remember. What's this got to do with…"

"You'd remember." She bit her lip, turning her face away. She really was way too short on time to do this right. "It's about you- your curse. See if there's another copy after I've gone. I'm taking mine back to Jenny- huh." Had he even met her properly? She couldn't remember. But her true identity definitely hadn't come out until well after he'd gone. "Giles's girlfriend. She's Kalderash. Point, there might be a way the curse can be broken. Drusilla doesn't want that, weirdly enough. I don't want that, obviously. And I'm fairly certain  _ you  _ don't want that either."

Angel fumbled for the nearest chair and sat down, looking like a man who'd been rocked too many times in one hour. "N-no. I- I don't," he said weakly, then rubbed his hands over his face. "How?"   


"'The touch of true love and happiness'," she said, managing not to sound  _ too _ disparaging.   


Angel looked up, his eyes growing wide with understanding and fear. "You. It's  _ you _ who could give me that," he murmured.   


_ Yeah, we need to have a little talk about that, dude.  _ Sometime in a distant future, when she'd worked out how to secure his curse and could safely set him free. "That was kinda the gist of the story," she said, turning her head away again uncomfortably. "Anyway, I wanted to make sure you knew, before I leave. You can't take steps to prevent something if you don't know it's a possibility. I'm going to see if Jenny knows anything; what we can work out to stop it being breakable."

Angel bowed his head over his clasped hands, closing his eyes briefly. When he looked up again his face was calmer, sunk into familiar patterns of brooding regret. "I'm sorry, Buffy," he said quietly. "It- down there, in the ballroom, sort of threw me for a loop."

She pulled a lopsided smile and relaxed her arms. "Yeah. I'm sorry too." She sighed and turned away to the window, looking down over the glittering front yard.   


"I still don't understand why you're taking  _ Spike,  _ though," he said in honest confusion. "If it's your way of getting back at Snow, you should know she's probably forgotten all about it already. Tonight's the first time I've seen her notice him in… since I took up my mantle."

"It's not, and I don't know yet if I am," she said quietly. "She'll be okay?"  _ Evil stepmother strikes unexpectedly, stealing away firstborn son…   
_

"Yes. Yeah, she'll be fine. Trust me," Angel said, guilty fondness for her obvious in his voice. "But if you have to leave me here, you could have named  _ anything _ else. It's  _ Spike,  _ Buffy."

His meaning sank through, and she turned her back on the window to face him doubtfully. "Angel, I didn't name Spike because I had to choose something else," she said cautiously. "I named him because-"  _ Woah, watch yourself…  _ she needed to end this as smoothly as possible, because he wasn't going to understand. She wasn't sure she did. "He doesn't belong here, and he was trapped. It seems like - as strange as it is to admit - Drusilla’s been good for this realm, and you've got a place here, making a difference for people. He doesn't." She checked the clock on the mantle; ten minutes. "I have to go if I'm going to get away in the time she gave me. Keep fighting the good fight?" she finished, not confident enough to promise him anything.  


"I will," he said, still looking slightly flabbergasted.   


She crossed to the door and removed the chair to open it, then gave him an encouraging smile. "Goodbye, Angel."

"Goodbye, Buffy," he said sadly. "Stay safe. I guess I'll see you in five years… I'll have earned the right to travel then."

She nodded vaguely and left the room, closing the door behind her gently.   


_ Next fight: courtyard, ten minutes. _ God, she hoped he wasn't pissed.


	14. Through this maze

He was furious. 

She'd made it there in record time, hitching up her dress and jogging around the outside of the building, then had to pace up and down waiting, wringing her fingers. She'd just started her fourth length of the path beside the wall when two paws slammed into her from above, square between the shoulder blades and with an impossible amount of force behind them. She hit the ground on her spread fingers, catching herself in time to bounce off it again, except that before she'd even finished falling his jaws were wrapped around the back of her throat.   


" _ Don't move," _ he growled, his voice distorted and muffled by the hold he had on her neck.   


She sank down a little on her braced hands, signalling acquiescence. "Can we talk about this a little more comfortably?"   


"No," he growled sullenly. His breath was a hot panting snarl, and she could feel his big wet tongue on her skin.   


"Okay." She grabbed for each of his jaws just behind the canines she could feel pressing against her throat, then swung a heel up and booted him in the ribs, on the same side she'd watched him favour all afternoon.   


His jaws twitched a fraction tighter with his involuntary yelp of pain, then loosened ever so slightly, and she wrenched on them to keep them moving in that direction and wider than had to be comfortable. In a second he was twisting off and away from her, and she shoved his jaws back before dropping them and rolling away to her feet.

"Bitch," he spat, working his jaw. She lifted her eyebrows. "Coulda killed you," he added in a grumble.

She shrugged; if he'd had any chance, it was gone as soon as he thought to draw out the killing part.   


"Accidentally," he snarled. "Christ, Buffy." Still licking at his mouth, he took up her pacing on the path, albeit in shorter laps.

She crossed her arms, now almost kinda regretting having prevented him from playing out his big bad threat. He had so little to back it with, and he really had done remarkably well in pinning her; he must have jumped from one of the window ledges above. She shrugged again. "I'm not exactly accustomed to surrendering peacefully." It was the closest to apologising she could do.

He huffed an agreeing breath and almost twitched with a smile before his face darkened again. "What the fuck were you thinking in there?" he shouted, stopping in place to turn to her with his teeth flashing. "I'm not your sodding booby prize!"

She watched him steadily, the anxious heave of his ribs as he panted, the stiffness of his tail. She should have warned him; he had to be thinking he'd just been sold into enemy slavery. And here she was staring down at him. Moving to the nearest row of oh so artistically placed decorative rocks, she gathered her dress and sat down on one, putting her eye level with him. "I wasn't thinking," she told him honestly. "I was feeling."   


He watched her in wary, heated silence, all but vibrating with suppressed agitation. But he was listening.   


Turning her head side-on to him, she gazed up at the high wall of the castle above them. "I've done nothing but think myself in circles and down dead ends since I got here. Everything I thought I knew is wrong… things I'd have thought were wrong are right. I've got no idea if what I chose was the  _ logical _ choice, and I am too damn tired to analyse it to death." Shaking her head, she looked back over at him. "But I do know it was the  _ right  _ one. I couldn't walk away and leave you here like that while everything in my heart told me how wrong it was. You are  _ not _ a consolation prize, Spike. Angel still needs help. But you needed me most. And I only had one place to award."   


Head cocked as he searched her face and words, he padded a couple of tiny steps closer, then sat down on his haunches, as if to signify that he would go no further. "So, what, you thought you'd slip in and steal me away from the queen I pledged my unlife to, and I would be so very grateful and align myself gladly to your flag?" he said, all bitter scorn. "I will  _ never _ bend my head for that collar in your hands, slayer. And you can't control me without it." Malice rumbled through his words in warning, and his eyes glared in stubborn, wounded defiance.   


She stood up, propelled by the steady current of defiance under her own skin, thoroughly sick of being assumed into one role or another. "I don't  _ want _ to control you!" she growled. "This thing?" Unhooking it from the hilt of her sword, she held the coiled collar up.   


He rose to his feet, muscles as coiled as the length of blackberry.   


"Is  _ wrong _ ," she stated.  _ "No one _ belongs in chains like this, Spike." Thorns pricked at her fingers, and she turned her glare on the thing, picturing Spike circling her with disconnected, dead eyes that weren't his own, and the once-proud vampire who had hunted her honestly.   


The collar went up in flames with a  _ whoosh _ of intense heat, fast as a spark put to gas. It was ashes before she could move to drop it from her maybe-still-burnable fingers, reduced to a pinch of tiny particles on the breeze.

Bending down, she wiped the taint of it from her hand onto the grass, then straightened up and faced Spike again. "Got it?"

Now he just looked more than a little awed, and very, very lost. Turning his face down and away, he swallowed and licked his muzzle, feet shifting restlessly.   


A trickle of doubt slithered back at the loneliness hanging heavy about him; he might well have chosen to live chained and belonging somewhere rather than free and alone, given a choice. Except, he hadn't been given one, and he didn't truly belong any less now than he had an hour ago. "You're not my property," she said quietly, "I won't tell you what to do. But I'm leaving now. If you want to come with me, I'll do everything I can to transform you back. And our deal still stands."   


He watched her with his face still lowered, cautious longing in his eyes. "What about the part where I eat your friends and neighbours?" he asked quietly.   


"You won't," she said firmly. In deliberate, quietly vehement words, she told him, "And if you try, I  _ will _ kill you, Spike. They are  _ mine _ to protect."

He dipped his chin in a nod of respectful acceptance, then locked eyes with her again. "And the rest of the world?"

She pursed her lips, looking down, things that were more felt than rationalised coalescing into words. "I can't be responsible for your choices. I can only be responsible for mine. And refusing to give you the freedom to make yours for yourself because you might choose badly… that's not something I can do. I'm the slayer. I stand against evil when it rises. I don't propagate it by enslaving someone because of their species. If I have to come after you…"  _ God, please don't make me…  _ "then that's on you. Just like it was before you ever came here."   


He watched her for a long moment, then nodded again. "Understood."

She brushed her hands over her dress and adjusted the sit of her belt, then asked him with a little nervous shiver, "Coming?"

His eyes swept over her slowly and searchingly, lingering on her hands, then he looked back over his shoulder at the castle. Her tongue felt frozen in place, impossibly big things dangling on a thread of spider silk in the air. Then he turned back to her and cocked his lip up in an uneven grin.

"Yeah. Course I'm coming, slayer." There was pain hidden away behind his tone, but no uncertainty.   


"Good," she sighed in relief, and smiled back at him.   


Lifting his tail jauntily, he led the way.    
  
  


The night was moonless and frosty, the previous day's melted snow-slush refrozen in places into fine, muddy ice panes that cracked and snappled underfoot. Thin clouds of steam puffed from his panting mouth, adding their vapour to the low fog that hovered just above the grass of the fields on either side. Once clear of the castle walls, Buffy had stopped to tuck half of her dress up into her sword belt, transforming it into a knee-length thing; underneath, her feet still wore her suede boots, rather than the embroidered slippers that went with the dress. Her stake was visible at the top of one, and it hit him that the sight of eight inches of smoothly polished pointed wood hadn't earlier triggered any automatic defensive action through him; vampire slayers were obviously not considered threats to the queen. Freed from the encumbrance of so much swirling fabric, Buffy picked up her heels and ran with him.   


As they neared the apex of the last rise in the road visible from the castle, his steps slowed until he drifted to a halt. Stopping beside him, Buffy watched him closely but made no comment, the wideness of her eyes the only tell she gave of worry. Inhaling a deeper breath of the crisp night air, he turned around to look behind him.

The castle lights glowed mutedly across the distance, squatting away under the black and jagged peaks of the roof. The party would continue through the wee hours, and he doubted anyone would notice his absence far longer. The wizard, perhaps, when he next blinked vaguely over at the world that existed away from his star charts and calculations on the heavens and noted that that strange hound had not poked his nose in to watch him work for a while. He would make a note of it somewhere, then turn back to his telescope.   


Currents of air moved gently down the road, and he felt that if ever there was a moment to let his wolf-song out into them, this was surely it, but there was no howl in his chest, only a dull ache of a goodbye.  _ Be happy, Dru _ . Sighing, he gave the castle a final sad smile, then turned his back on it.

Buffy was staring off at the castle too, her face quietly sad for everything she was leaving behind. The entire disillusionment of the unquestioning faith she had brought here for Angel suddenly seemed like a terrible thing, an ending that should not exist in fairy-tale. But he supposed this had never been their tale. It was all Dru's, and to the title holder the happily ever after.   


"Are you okay?" Buffy asked in a soft little voice, looking down at him, her fingers rubbing at the folds of her dress restlessly;  _ finally _ wary enough to restrain herself from reaching for him uninvited, even if only because she was afraid of hurting him. Fuck, he'd been such a moody arse to her for the entire week, and she  _ still  _ concerned herself with his feelings.   


Still concerned herself with  _ him. _ Christ, could he be any less thankless? She shouldn't even have considered picking him from a box of dud prizes and old banana peels. He moved to her side and brought his ear up under her hand, encouraging her to fondle it again. She'd seemed to enjoy it last time. And he had nothing else to offer.   


She stroked his ear and rubbed her fingers around the base of it, and he leaned more into her hand automatically, because god, her fingers felt like nothing he could any longer remember feeling, making him want to melt onto his back at her feet and beg her to just keep  _ touching  _ him.   


Her slightly damp eyes were still watching him worriedly, prompting him to remember her question. "Yeah," he murmured. "Time we went."

She nodded, then sniffed quickly to wrestle back her looming tears. "Sorry," she said with a weak smile.   


He rubbed his head under her hand again, resisted the urge to lick it, and told her, "Hey now. These manly dry eyes of mine are only a perk of canine biology."   


She looked stricken rather than cheered by that, and, fuck, he was never going to be able to say anything right with her if he tried. His only skills lay in winding her up.   


"'S alright, slayer," he said as lightly as he could, pulling away to start walking again. "'About time I faced it."   


The song snuck up in his mind in that looping, insidious way they had, and, already searching for different phrases as he was, it had ahold of him before he could escape it.  _ "So long ago I don't remember when, that's when they say I lost my only friend _ …" He turned to Buffy and rolled his eyes heavenward in wry irritation, but hers were brighter and far too attentive as he kept singing,  _ "They said she died easy of a broken heart disease, as I listened through the cemetery trees…" _   


Breaking into a slow run again, he gave up caring and let the song roll through him, wondering distantly where on earth he'd heard it. The Bronze, maybe; that feeding trough of first-time-tipsy teenagers and music to lose themselves to. Though not so much a feeding trough for him anymore… he'd gone this long without a real meal. He could toe the line while in her town.  _ "Hey, come on try a little, nothing is forever, there's got to be something better than, in the middle," _ Well, least it was truer than her little ditty.  _ "But me and-" _ Glancing up at her beside him with a devilish surge of mischief, he thought the next word at her intently,  _ "Cinderella…" _

She joined in with,  _ "We put it all together, we can drive it home, with one headlight…," _ her face jumping through alarm and reproach before she gave up and grinned.   


He snickered to himself between lines.  _ Got you, pet _ . He lost her after the chorus, but no matter, she'd be stuck giving a repeat performance as soon as he got through the next verse,  _ "She said it's cold, it feels like Independence Day, and I can't break away from this parade…" _ Oh, the irony.   


Buffy giggled, the sound bursting free in joyous rebellion and devil-may-care ebullience, and he felt it bubble through him and punch that truth home; he  _ was  _ free, and he  _ was  _ going home. Whatever home now was. He raised his voice as they hit the chorus again, and she matched him.

Halfway through the next verse, he slammed into a wall on,  _ "I'm so alo-" _ and cut his singing mid-sentence. Because he wasn't alone. He hadn't felt so unlonely as this in two years. The utter incongruity killed the Disney effect stone dead (even if he did _ 'feel just like somebody else' _ in ways), and then there was only their panting breath and feet on the crunchy icy dirt road. His wild exhilaration began to drain swiftly away with the cessation of the music, and for the first time, he found himself wishing he could bring an involuntary song back.

" _ Hey, come on try a little… _ " Buffy sang quietly, and with a heavy dose of embarrassment-   


-and they were back. He yipped excitedly and belted it out with her until the lyrics ended and the Disney effect backing track faded out properly, their feet slowing to a walk with it.

Tongue freed again, Buffy laughed, slightly self-consciously now. "That was insane. I mean, I thought I was used to all kinds of mystical shenanigans, but that was…"

"Strangely objective-less?"

" _ Fun _ ," she said, laughing again before pulling a self-deprecating smile. "Buffy obviously doesn't get out much."

"I dunno, you look pretty damn far from home to me," he said, still grinning. Glancing at the horizons for landmarks and distance travelled versus sunrise, he asked, "We got a wait when we get to that pond, or can you open it immediately?"   


"How do you know we're going to a pond?" she asked shrewdly.   


"The square one, in the moss forest, roseberries all around it? You only dragged the scent six miles across this place when you got here. And given there's no such thing as glass mirrors around here…"

"Oh." Biting her bottom lip and squinting her eyebrows, she said awkwardly, "I, um, I didn't exactly  _ open  _ it to get here…"

He looked up at her sharply, then turned his head away to the other side as certain facts about that night complicated the admonishment he'd wanted to spit out.

Facing the road ahead, Buffy murmured, "Someone called me." Then tossed her hair back from her face and said more loudly, "I guess we, like, try shouting into it? Kendra would have taken the mirror - it was in the museum - back to Giles. And Jenny studied up on mirror magic, in case we ever found one. She might be holding it open."

"The water would fall out," he said dryly.   


"Oh. I guess it would." Her posture was dropping, weariness creeping out in it at this latest problem in a week full of them.   


"Click our heels three times and think of home," he said lightly. "Make that Plan A, anyway. You good to keep running?"

"Yes!" she said, bristling. "Are  _ you?" _ Her eyes travelled down his side in assessment.   


"Could run you into the ground and then do a victory lap," he said cockily. Pain was something to be ignored. "Hie up those heels, then. Sooner we get there, more time we have to fuckarse around." No saying what might happen if they were still here at dawn; it could be absolutely nothing at all, or they could turn to stone in the first rays of ligh-  _ Don't think it.  _ He checked the sky again, relieved to find it dark below the stars.

He broke into a loping run again, and she ran beside him.

  
  


The road shrank, eventually becoming the driveway she remembered; it felt a million miles closer than it had on the outward journey. Spike left it before the old woman’s house came into view, climbing a low stone wall to strike out across a paddock, something furtive and quiet falling over him. She mirrored his sneakiness as they hurried through knee-deep fog in a wide curve towards the forest ahead, biting her tongue until they had climbed another low wall and reached the edge of the trees, where he began to relax.

"What was it?" she whispered.

"Grumpy chicken house," he whispered back. "Might have chased us. It's, ah, little peeved about the eggs."

"The  _ house?" _ she asked.   


He nodded, barely visible as the cover of the trees closed around them. "Don't know why it had to get in such a snit over it," he said sulkily. "Not like it does anything with the damn things. What's it expect one to do when it throws them out into the paddocks all night?" He licked his lips hungrily.   


She looked back over her shoulder, but the spot she thought the house should be was invisible from this angle. " _ Marshmallowey _ eggs?" she asked, with reluctance.   


"Yes. Tasty things if you can get your hands on them."

"Oh, gross," she muttered, stomach recoiling instinctively, if illogically. "And the woman who lives in it?"

"Dunno. Been giving the place a wide berth since the egg incident." He stopped walking for a moment to shake his coat out.

"Why do you do that?" she asked curiously. It was becoming such a familiar mannerism, and always seemed too intentional to be the accidental canine behaviour she'd first pinned it as.

His head turned up to her, but she couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. After a beat, he started walking again. "Fur gets out of place… sorta prickly." He glanced up at her again, and must have been content that she was merely interested. "Like my skin's too tight."

"And shaking fixes it?"   


"Yeah."

She nodded. "I think I get it," she said, and shook her arms out. It was kind of recentering, even without fur.

She heard him snicker warmly into the dark.

  
  


Spike slowed, stopped, sniffing the air in careful assessment, then turned off the vague path they’d been following and into the trees. She followed close behind him, their feet silent on the spongy, moss-covered ground. Moving around the next bushy black tree, something up ahead caught her eyes; a pale, reflective glow through the foliage between it and them. It would have looked like moonlight on a body of water, except that it was positioned too high, well above the ground, and the overhead tree cover was too thick, and there had been no sign of the moon tonight. She froze, and within a step Spike copied her.

Squinting through the trees, she couldn’t make out anything more than she had, but there was definitely  _ something  _ there, something out of place. She waited, and when it didn't move, checked with Spike. He had turned his head back to watch her, ears swivelling about and nose lifted to scent the air. Lower to the ground as he was, he wouldn't be able to see it.   


She sank down silently to squat closer to him. "There's something up there," she whispered. "Tall and whitish."  _ Please don't be another unicorn…   
_

He looked from her to the obscuring bushes, listened again, then turned to her. "Can't smell anything… Pond's just ahead there too." His words were neutral information-passing, then he waited for her to make a decision.

A warm, grateful feeling unfolded inside of her; yes, she was off her home ground here, but she was more than competent at handling unknown threats, and for all of his infuriating taunting, he hadn't ever acted as though he had anything less than perfect faith in her abilities. "Follow me," she whispered.   


He ducked his head in agreement, and she stood up again slowly, sighting on pale-glowy-thing again before slipping past Spike to lead them closer.   


Halfway to it, the thing moved, resolving itself into a section of the broad, white side of some creature.  _ Don't you dare be a unicorn.   
_

A thud-thudding of a hard foot on the soft ground came from it with another shift of its body, and close on her heels, Spike whispered,  _ "Hooves." _

_ Thank you, fairy-tale gods. _ Emboldened, she snuck around the final clump of tall bushes separating her from view of it.

It was a unicorn. A  _ unicorn  _ unicorn. Its hide shone like moonlight on porcelain; its long, thick tail flowed gracefully down its rear legs. Its feet were dainty little hooves tipped in gold, its horn was blunt-ended and decoratively twirled, and  _ all _ of it fitted together as one coherent, natural-looking and equine creature. It was  _ beautiful.   
_

And it was staring back at them across the pond with big doe eyes that were timid and gentle beneath their startlement.   


She could feel herself beaming at it, and a little girl inside of her was screaming in excitement while begging her to run up and hug it. She resisted (rather admirably, she thought), watching the creature cautiously.

The unicorn's nostrils flared as it sniffed in their direction, and its breath sounded as soft and puffy as white summer clouds and as far from a growl as a sound could possibly be. Its pretty little hooves skittered nervously in place for a few seconds, then it sprang into movement, spinning around and bolting off through the forest away from them.

Buffy let out a dreamy, half-desirous, half-sated sigh, staring at the forest it had vanished into. "Did you see…?" she asked Spike softly.

It was a stupid question, but, "Yeah," he murmured back, sounding no less amazed.   


"I told you they were nice," she said happily.   


"Yes, you did," he said, letting her have her moment of vindication at last. Moving out into the open, he turned his attention to the pond.

It was frozen. Which, duh, she should have expected, but still. The deeper cold here in the shadowed forest had been seeping into her for the last half-hour, prickling up the tiny hairs on her bare arms and swiftly approaching shiverville as the heat she'd gained by running ran out. If it got any worse, she was going to start wishing Spike would piss her off enough to burn something.   


Squatting down by the frost-patterned ice of the pond, she reached out to feel it.

"Don't!" Spike wuffed, freezing her hand before it was halfway. She looked up at him. Shrugging, he offered, "If it's full of broken chunks of ice, it's not going to look very mirror-like."

"I wasn't going to break it," she muttered, but withdrew her hand and went back to studying it by eye. It didn't look very mirror-like now, either. More like her windowpanes had with snow on them; both non-reflective and too opaque to see through.   


Spike lowered his head and blew at the surface gently, peering down at it, then looked up at her again. "Can't see shit, but it can't be very thick. Hasn't been cold long."

She nodded as if she knew something about degrees of fricken coldness and the formation of ice on forest ponds.  _ Oh take me home to sunny California, little pool. _ It was hard to picture the warmth of home from here. "Plan A?" she asked.   


He pointed at her feet with his muzzle. "You're the one in heels."   


"Okay…" Standing up, she stared firmly at the middle of the pond, tapped the heels of her boots together three times, and thought,  _ 'There's no place like home'.  _ Nothing changed. She tried again, saying the words aloud; nothing. Bending over, she called a few rounds of, "Hello? Giles? Jenny? Anybody?" at it with increasing volume and an increasing feeling of stupidity, then gave it up with a sigh. Straightening up again, she looked at Spike and lifted her eyebrows.   


"Don't look at me, I came up with Plan A. Next one's on you," he said easily.   


"We wouldn't need a next one if yours worked," she snarked lightly.   


His white teeth glinted in the dark from a comfortable grin.   


"Alright, so… we jump," she announced simply. "Unless you've got a better idea that you're too much of a smartass to have offered?"   


He looked from her to the ice and back dubiously, turned his muzzle up in thought, then said, "Right then. Jumping it is."

"Good." She considered the ice again; imagined them leaping onto it, through it, down to wherever-whatever the barrier was and pushing through it. Saw water filled with shards of ice closing over her head, its cold fingers reaching for her mouth and nose, and somewhere in the midst of it, a very likely disorientated wolf that she was responsible for getting through safely. "I think we should hang onto each other somehow," she suggested, trying to sound casual about it. "Just in case. Um…"  _ I guess we can't really hold hands…  _ "Maybe if I pick you up?"   


He licked his nose, frowning up at her. She thought he was going to refuse, or at least argue over it, but then he muttered a quiet, "Alright," and moved to stand beside her on tense legs.

She crouched down, dithered her arms around awkwardly for a moment, then wrapped one around his chest, one around his hind legs, and scooped him up against her as she stood up. He felt like one hundred and fifty-odd pounds of rigid, resistant bony elbows and hard corners, with paws sticking out everywhere.   


"Am I squash- Do you want me to put you down?" she stumbled through.   


"'S fine," he said tightly.   


"Well then relax or something, you're all stiff and awkward," she complained nervously.  _ Stiff?? Why, tongue, why? _ It was going to be awkward enough if she landed with a naked, vampire-shaped Spike on her lap without her bad word choices adding to it. "I'm not going to drop you."

With a short, huffy sigh, he did so, relaxing into her arms and chest by slow degrees he became softly pliant, his weight moulded against her comfortably.   


"Okay," she breathed. "Ready?"   


"Ready," he said easily.   


"There's no place like the hellmouth," she told the pond, then bent her knees and jumped onto it.

The ice shattered at the first touch of impact from her feet, pieces flying outwards in every direction as they plummeted through it. She'd tucked her legs up as she fell from the apex of her jump, remembering the shallow bottom of the pool, and the water that swooshed away as they hit it seemed to crash back over her head with impossible speed. She probably  _ was _ squashing Spike now with the death grip she had on him, but he'd just have to deal, and he wasn't fighting it.   


The cold hit like a freight train. Instant and everywhere and, that expression about things turning to ice in your veins? She was never using it again. This felt like her muscles and tendons and sinews had turned to ice, nevermind the blood that had once moved in them. It flooded her sensory awareness, and if there was a screaming screech of portal-crossing or a blinding flash behind her scrunched up eyelids, they were drowned out by it.

But there must have been. Because a split-second later, her feet hit something solid, then she landed hard on her knees on a floor that wasn't underwater, with a (now soaking wet) canine still clutched to her chest. 


	15. Flood

Spike twisted a little in her arms, trying to find his feet on the flooded floor as water gushed from the folds of her dress. She forced her grip to loosen, then gasped in a breath, her lungs feeling all weirdly squashed and contracted. Squirming right around on her lap, an over-excited Spike swept his tongue over one side of her jaw with a short little whine, while her right hand grabbed onto the thick, sticking-out fur of his ruff for support. He was good to cling to while her body caught up. She could ignore the lick this one time. And the fresh wave of water he shook everywhere a second later.  


She was focusing her eyes on the  _ where _ part of the equation, when Spike stiffened, whined, then pulled his face away and opened and closed his mouth a few times.  


"Spike?" she asked, trepidation in it.

He lifted distressed eyes to hers, the answer clear in them.

"I guess they don't have talking wolves in the real world," she said with a wobbly smile.

He made a short little snarly-sound that took no effort to translate to an expletive, then seemed to shrug it aside, looking around the room.

"It's Giles's," she said as it fell into place. "We're in Giles's bathroom." Twisting to look behind her, she found the mirror from the museum propped against the wall. And intact.  _ Phew, I guess.  
_

A stair creaked overhead, and Spike’s head whipped to the closed door.  


"Giles?" she called weakly, then pushed herself to her feet with the aid of Spike’s neck. Her dress felt like it weighed a ton, and it had freed itself from her belt to leave acres of sodden fabric dragging around her legs. "Giles? Jenny?" she tried again.  


"Buffy? It's Buffy," Giles's voice called back, then two pairs of feet hurried down the stairs and her watcher flung open the door. Water swooshed across the floor in a tiny wave behind it, then slunk away towards the drain with the rest.

Giles was wearing pyjamas. Which, okay, it was nighttime, but somehow, for all the times she'd burst in to rouse him from bed, she'd never seen him in a pair of tweedy-patterned flannel pyjamas before. They were reassuring in all their comfortable domesticity. Jenny hovered at his shoulder in a satiny nightgown, her crossbow trained on the middle of the bathroom with a steady, two-handed grip; equally reassuring, for the common sense side of the equation.  


"Hi," Buffy said, lifting her hand in a tiny wave.

"Buffy!" he announced again, relief clear. Then glanced at the wolf standing at her waist and asked dubiously, "And…  _ Angel?"  
_

Spike snarled, the muscles beneath her hand leaping into tension. She pulled on his fur with her handhold and stepped forward (slosh, slosh), interspersing herself between them.  


"Spike. It's Spike," she told Giles. "He's w-with me." Her jaw was starting to shiver.  


The snarl subsided.

"Yes," Giles said faintly. "Ah, goodness… Are you…" He stepped into the room, bare feet splashing, and grabbed a towel from a rail on the wall, holding it out to her while reaching for another. " _ Lord _ that's cold. You look half frozen. Here."  


She took the offered towel and rubbed it over her face - _ warm, _ it was so deliciously warm - then hugged it to her chest while Giles wrapped another one around her shoulders, making her feel suddenly very small and perhaps justifiably tired and ready to be taken care of.

"Go and fetch her some clothes, Rupert," Jenny ordered, putting down her crossbow and stepping into the room to grab another towel. "And put the heater on." Turning to Buffy, with a slightly anxious attempt at authority she said, "You'll want help getting out of that dress."

As much as she'd forgiven  _ Miss Kalderash  _ for her year-plus of deceit, tension still prickled on the odd occasions that the woman moved to take charge; she wasn't a watcher, nor was she one of Buffy’s peers, and it left her awkwardly feeling her way out in the middle.  


_ Step-watcher. I've been suspicious of her as some kind of stepwatcher. _ Jenny had done nothing to truly justify it, and until the examinations were done regarding the suggestions of a certain fairy-tale, Buffy decided she damn well wasn't going to treat her as guilty. "Thanks," she told her warmly. Or, shiveringly, but with a willing ceding of command.  


Giles stopped with his hand on the doorknob, looking from Buffy to Spike.  


Buffy nodded at Giles. "Close it. Spike, get in the tub."

Spike gave her a frowning glare filled with every word of  _ I most certainly will not when I can't even argue about it. _   


"Please," she added wearily, and motioned to the curtain rail around it. "Just while I get dressed."  


A sullen glare in place, he stalked over to Giles's bathtub and climbed in, with a degree of awkwardness, nails scraping and slipping on the enamel.  


She pulled the curtain around him with an apologetic grimace, then reached for the buttons down the side of her dress. Jenny was right. Her fingers were numb and fumbly, refusing to do what she told them to, and at Jenny's, "Here, let me," she gladly gave up.  


The sound of vigorous fur-shaking and driven sprays of water came from behind the curtain, and his tail thumped against the wall a few times.  


Halfway unbuttoned, Buffy remembered the book. "Wait. There was…" Reaching into the back of her dress, she drew it out dripping. "This?"  _ Shit. _   


"Rupert!" Jenny called, carrying it to the door. "Wet book!"  


In a thumping of feet he was at the door to retrieve it like an anxious father, and Jenny returned to the buttons.  


"This gown is just… amazing," Jenny said, eyes sweeping over a section of the embroidery. "I'll hang it in the living room to dry properly."  


"Gotta have some perks with the job," she murmured, accepting a new towel and wrapping it around herself as Jenny lifted the abundance of heavy, dragging fabric off over her head. With it gone her body was strange, too shivery and dull to feel entirely her own. "Take my s-sword too?"  


"On it," Jenny said, picking it up with the dress. "I'd better go and chase up your clothes." She indicated the bathtub curtain with a questioning look.

Buffy nodded.  _ Yes, I can still take care of myself in a towel. _ Then added a smile to it.  _ But thank you for caring.  _   


Once Jenny had closed the door again, she padded wetly across to the bathtub curtain and asked, "Are you-  _ fuck. _ " Talking to him through a wall wasn't going to get her anywhere on the answer front. She opened the edge of the curtain.  


He was sitting on his haunches in the tub, fur sticking out in damp- ha,  _ spikes _ , and a sour, irony-laced look on his face.  


"Okay?" she finished asking. "D-do you want some towels in there? Or-" Retract that; she wasn't even going to attempt to dry him herself until she had clothes on. "Some towels?"

His ears came forward as she spoke, then he followed them and stood up, leaning towards her.

"Yes?" she asked.  _ Keep it simple to answer.  _ They were going to need to agree on a system.  


He stopped, pulled his head back a little, shook it.  _ No. _ He clearly had further words on his mind, but she was too cold to play twenty questions trying to work them out.

"Are you sure?" she asked, pulling her own towels tighter around her.  


In answer he turned himself in a careful circle, then lay down, folding his hand-paws underneath and resting his chin on the angled end of the bath in a bored fashion. He did look remarkably dry already, the softer underlayer of his coat all puffed out again. Even if the entire room stunk of wet dog.  


"Okay," she said again.  


A knock sounded on the door, and Jenny brought in a pile of folded clothes and two more towels. Buffy took them thankfully, closed the curtain again on Spike, and got dressed. The jumper was her favourite oversized snuggly one that had been missing lately; she must have managed to leave it here at some stage. It was more than comforting to burrow into now and feel a little like herself again, and if she wasn't warm yet, she soon would be.  


"You can come out now," she told Spike, pulling the curtain back. "And I can dry you some more?" She held up a towel.  


He glanced at it, then jerked his muzzle left and right once and climbed out of the bath.

All right. She shouldn't push him. He'd been oddly acquiescent so far, and this couldn't be at all easy for her often rudely voluble… for Spike. She put the towel down on a shelf and opened the door, and his feet trailed her into the living room.  


Where there was  _ warmth _ . She sat on the floor with her back close to the heater and a blanket wrapped around her front, shushing Giles when he raised concerns about warming up too much too quickly. Spike eased down onto his stomach one foot to her side, and although Giles's face took on a rather familiar discomposed expression at the sight of all that damp fur seeping water into the rug, he pressed his lips together and let it be. Besides, wet canine was hardly the worst thing she'd been responsible for dripping onto his floor.

The tongue-biting lasted until a mug of Giles's weird not-cocoa hot malt drink -stuff had been pushed into her hands, then he sat down on the couch across from her, looked at her with a sort of worn-out, fond irritation and asked, "Well?"

Sighing, she rubbed her eyes, then told him, "The mirror goes to fairy-tale land. It comes out in a pond, hence the water… sorry. Good call on the bathroom." She yawned, warmth soporific in its return.  


Curled up on the end of the couch beside Giles, Jenny gave her a smile. She'd got dressed herself, though Giles had only traded his splashed pyjama pants for sweats.

"Yes, well, our one attempt to open it resulted in a minor flood," Giles said, then took a sip of his drink. "Dare I ask what you were thinking?"  


Buffy looked down at her lap, watching steam curl from the surface of her cup. "I don't know," she said quietly. "There was…"  _ Don't look at Spike.  _ "It felt like the right move. I went for it. And I found my way back easily enough, so… win?" She smiled up at him hopefully.  


"And Angel?" he asked, very gently.  


_Ohh._ They had _all_ worked hard on the 'rescue Angel' research and think-tanking, driven mostly by her insistence that it had to and would be done. Arriving back without him lent itself to one simple conclusion. "He's fine," she told her lap. Her warming cheeks had found enough blood in them to flush. "I, um, left him there."  


Giles digested this with the sedate composure she loved about him, then asked, "And you chose to bring Spike back with you?"

"Yea-huh." Fighting off another yawn, she added, "He needs de-spelling, or un-transforming, or whatever it's called."

Giles's attention moved to the wolf, perplexity giving way to intrigue. "Does he know he's, well, Spike?"  


Spike furrowed his eyebrows, shook his head slowly in a way that said it was the most idiotic question he'd ever heard, then rested his muzzle down on his front legs, cold-shouldering Giles.  


"Yes," Buffy added, unnecessarily, but feeling like she should back him up. "He could talk until we landed in your bathroom. He's been helping me all week."  


Spike lifted an eyebrow in her direction.  


_ Well you have, so deal with it.  
_

"He could speak as he did on that Halloween?" Giles asked.  


"No. I mean, he could say whatever he wanted. He's Spike, in a wolf body."  


He'd closed his eyes, ignoring what he probably wanted to call time-wasting drivel.  


"And we're to- to turn him back into a vampire?"  


"Yes." Firm bottom line time; this part was non-negotiable.  


Giles sat back, took another sip of his drink, then turned his eyes to Jenny in query.

"If it's a spell of some kind, it shouldn't be too hard to remove," she offered cautiously. "We could start with a general reversal spell."

Spike’s head came up hopefully.  


"When?" Buffy asked.  


Jenny thought about it, looking at Spike speculatively. "The moon's full in four days; I'd prefer to wait until it's on the wane. Otherworldly magic can be difficult to… to translate, I suppose, and tying ours to the retreating moon would help. Friday night would be optimal."

Buffy turned to Spike; he gave her a sort of unknowing, shrugging look, but didn't seem too concerned about the prospect of waiting a few days. She supposed for him it had already been two years without any end in sight.  


"If you say so," she told Jenny. "I guess we'll just…" She couldn’t take him back to the dorm with her. "Stay at mom's until then. You haven't had to tell her anything, have you?" And oh hell, she'd missed a whole  _ week  _ of classes. That was one new personal record she couldn’t afford.  


"No, I believe Willow's been able to cover for you thus far," Giles said. "She's also picked up your assignments, and informed your teachers that you're out of state attending your grandmother's funeral. Again."

"I could have had multiple grandmothers," she muttered, silently thanking Willow. "Did I miss anything else?" 

  
  


Beside him, Buffy slouched further by the minute, exhaustion growing as the watcher rattled on and probed for the story. It was comfortable enough by the heater, but his stomach was empty and his patience starting to wear, and for fuck's sake, couldn't the pillock lay off for now?  


Buffy stared into the liquid in her mug, then remembered him with a little startle and offered it over with a lift of her eyebrows.  


He was going to ignore it and maybe stand up to start pacing about, but it was Horlicks, the scent wafting up full of layered nostalgia, so when she set it down beside him he changed his mind and began lapping it carefully from the mug. It tasted exactly as it should, homeland of the empire packaged politely in a tin to be reconstituted on demand, and as it grounded him solidly in the fact that he was back on  _ earth _ , with all of its wide lands and missed things and familiar patterns and tastes, he reflected that perhaps all those nineteenth-century acclimatisation societies had had a point after all; a taste, a scent, the sound of a bird call from home were powerful restoratives to one's spirits after wandering so far.  


"Yes, let me take you," Jenny was saying as he finished, and Buffy pushed herself to her feet. Perhaps they weren't quite as blind as he'd silently accused them of.

Spike stood up, licking his lips, trying to jostle himself into the energy required to walk to Buffy’s. His earlier prediction was proving true, the bruised side of his ribs now stiff and painful, burning warningly when he moved. But Jenny was picking up keys, small and jangly, and oh, yeah, of course, there were  _ cars, _ and she was going to drive them there. Alright then.

He followed Buffy out to a cream Volkswagen Beetle, where she opened the door and slid the front seat out of the way for him to get into the back. The space was enclosed and strange-smelling, giving his instincts pause; he told them to shove off and climbed inside. He'd  _ owned _ a car, once upon a pre-mirror time. Back when he'd had hands to drive it with. Probably too much to hope for that it'd still be sitting in the abandoned factory he had briefly called home. He and Dru. Memories of her there filled his attention while Jenny coaxed the beetle's engine to life, painful enough to blot out other worries. If the DeSoto was still sitting there, it wouldn't start without some work. And even if it was and did… one couldn't drive without working legs, either, and he was far from certain that in gaining hands he wouldn't be trading in his. But that was days away. He would sleep, then he could attempt to plan for it.  


In an impossibly short time they were pulling up at the curb outside Buffy’s house, the eastern sky bright with pre-dawn. Jenny glanced at him in the mirror as he sat up, then did a double-take.  


"You have a reflection," she said by way of explanation.  


He huffed through his nose gently.  _ Guess I do. _ He'd seen himself in standing water often enough, but a mirror was a different (and non-existent in fairy) beast. Right, first opportunity he got, he was going to study himself properly in one. Work out what it was about his ears that affected Buffy. Practice his teeth-baring.  


"Does the sun…?" Jenny began asking.  


"Nope," Buffy said for him, climbing out and folding her seat down for him again. "Impervious to sunlight-" she stopped, as if struck by a thought, or maybe thinking she was saying too much. "If a wolf can do it, he can," she finished. "Thanks for the ride." 

  
  


She didn't have her key-  _ dammit, _ it was lost with her jeans in mirrorville. The back porch spare let them in, Spike following her over the threshold without issue (and he wondered why she struggled to think of him as a vampire like any other).  


"Mom?" she called softly from the kitchen. There was no response, but the house had that feeling of occupation. Spike’s ears were swivelling about again, his head turning this way and that as he scented the air curiously. "She's probably still asleep," she told him, likely unnecessarily (just how good were vampire-wolf senses?), then headed for the stairs.  


Poking her head around her mother's door confirmed that yes, she was home and asleep, and Buffy had almost retreated again when she asked blearily, "Buffy?"

"Yep." Urg, now she had to be all explainey. "I'm just gonna go to bed. And there's, um, there's kind of a dog staying with me."

"A  _ dog?"  _ Joyce asked, sounding much more awake.

_ What, are dogs too mundane for me? _ "Yep."

"Do you want some help?" her mother added.

"Nope, we're fine, just, um, go back to sleep." She drew back quickly and shut the door. When she turned around, Spike was standing at the top of the stairs, watching her with that steady, reserved look he occasionally managed. She waved him into her room and closed the door quietly behind them, then pushed in the lock. "That’s for mom," she told him, indicating it. "I'm sure you could open it if you wanted. And I know you're not a dog; anyone with half an eye could see that." She needed to lay down the rules;  _ Don't even think about frightening mom. Tell me somehow if you object to being brought here and locked in, because you're not my prisoner. _ More, though; she needed to lie down, preferably before her legs decided to stop holding her up.  


Spike obviously had the same idea; he glanced around the room, gave her and the door a casual look, then padded over to the opposite wall and curled up on the carpet with his back against it.

"No, you can-" Can  _ what? _ She couldn't offer him her bed. But she wasn't about to make him sleep in his forlorn little ball on the floor now that he was her… responsibility. Hers to take care of. Thinking about these silly little details was hard; they were trying their best to stretch up into insurmountable problems on the back of her weariness.  


"I have more blankets!" she blurted on a flash of inspiration. Dropping down to peer under her bed, she pushed her spare weapons suitcase aside and pulled out the spare comforter one. Shaken out and refolded into quarters, it looked more comfortable than the floor. "Would this be okay?" she asked, anxious now, because crap, she really hadn't ever planned for hosting a sleepover with a wolf who was actually a man-vampire.  


Spike looked at her with a bemused frown for a moment, then with a yawn slowly uncurled himself and stood up, moving a few steps back from the spot he'd claimed.  


She put the comforter down, trying to make it nicely puffy and square. "Do you want a pillow?"

This time he gave her a look that plainly told her she was insane, or something less polite, then stepped onto the blanket-bed, turned in a circle, and curled up again, closing his eyes.

"Okay, well, tell me if you need anything," she mumbled. Then she stumbled over to her own bed, which, yes, was less fairy-taleesque in luxurious softness and curtaining and detail, but was  _ hers _ and therefore more comfortable, and climbed in without changing. 

  
  


Buffy almost met the definition of 'asleep before hitting the pillow', and little wonder when she'd given the past twenty-four hours everything she had and, he suspected, skipped a night before that. Still, he waited until she was deeply under before getting up to explore the room.  


There were shelves holding books and trinkets, a chair, a closet, draws he considered tugging open before passing over, bedside tables. Posters on the walls, photos of her little gang, an unplugged stereo. All of it belonging to a life unknown to him, and the fading scents on most of it marking these as items she'd rarely revisited this year. Initial scene examination concluded, he turned to the bed and her tousled head on the pillow. The freedom she'd been careful to impress upon him, the lack of demands beyond the necessary, opened out too widely around him in this strange bedroom, the world suddenly too big and his neck too light. Barriers he had long pushed back against in small acts of fierce defiance had melted away at her touch, leaving him barren of an enemy and lost in uncharted space.  


Setting his front paws on the bed, he stretched over to scent at the nearest trailing ends of her hair, drawn by instincts canine and other alike. This was known and unchanged; the taste of her in his living lungs, the steady warmth of her. It wasn't for him, any more than her choosing him had been personal. It was simply who she was. And it was soothing all the same. He padded back over to the place she had made for him, and lay down to sleep. 

  
  


Buffy woke up with that confused, muzzy sense of dreamy disorientation, afternoon light only adding to it.  _ My room, back in Sunnydale, Spike- _ She sat up.  


He lay on the bed she'd made him, head lifted to watch her quietly.  


_ Well of course he's quiet _ . The silence of his tongue seemed to freeze hers, turning any idle words she might have spoken into rudely careless examples of her ability to speak them. She looked away, fought for greater awakeness, then turned her eyes back to him and said, "Sorry. It's just weird when you can't… Yeah. Have you been waiting? You should have woken me up. What time is it?"  _ Stop digging yourself this pit of questions!  _ "I mean, if you wanted anything. Not that I don’t appreciate the sleep… or have a clock." Throwing back the blankets, she got out of bed before her blabbering could get any worse.  


The dull, numb feeling in her stomach reminded her that she really needed to eat something, lots of somethings, and- "I didn't even feed you!" she cried. She was a terrible wolf-take-carerer. No wonder Drusilla hadn't wanted her to take him.  


He snorted, voicelessly laughing at her for fussing, then climbed to his feet, favouring one side.  


"You're sore," she said, unnecessarily, moving over to him and crouching down. "Is it-" Their personal space boundaries were uncertain, and she felt unfairly dictatorial with all her orders so far; she managed to restrain the urge to just start feeling him over and asked, "Let me look?"

He considered her for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder.  _ If you must. _   


Gently, she ran her hand down his side, finding the place where the demon-rhino and then she herself had kicked him. His skin twitched in a flinching fashion when she probed at it, but he didn't move another muscle. "Nothing feels broken," she told him, "But I'm not exactly a vet."

He shrugged again, unbothered. It had looked okay last night; it was probably just the bruising coming out.

She swept her hand over his flank in a thoughtless finishing pat, and he leaned into it instantly, his eyes sliding away from her face as he did so. She got it - it was one thing to give his ear a comforting rub when they were in a different world where none of the usual rules applied; quite another to touch him affectionately here in her private bedroom when he would soon be a vampire again. She would not even be  _ thinking  _ of stroking the- the side, or closer to waist, she supposed, of a human-shaped Spike. But he was still leaning into her touch, and she was still stroking him with small glides of her hand.  


"Spike," she whispered, then pressed her lips together, hovering on the edge before she jumped. "I think wolves need pats. Like dogs. So if you have a tail and fur and… well, it just makes sense. If you want."

He turned his eyes back to her, hope and caution battling in them. For a moment he reminded her of the real unicorn, its skittering hooves dancing in place while it decided whether to stay or flee.  


Staying won out. With another careless shrug of his fur, he lowered his head to the side of her body in an encouraging almost-hug.  


Smiling, she began patting him properly, finding places down his back he liked to be scratched and burying her other arm around his ruff again. It felt  _ right,  _ all those silly side issues about who he was under his fur shoved aside; as though she was finally filling an ignored need in herself while giving him something he very obviously longed for. Whole tufted clumps of shedding fur floated from him with her scratching, and she tugged a few more free that were sticking out invitingly. "You need brushing," she told him softly. "And a bath."

He shook his head quickly where it was buried against her side, a firm no to that suggestion.

"Alright," she laughed, being rocked on her crouching heels slightly by his head. "No bath. But maybe a little bit of brushing? It can't be comfortable having all these clumpy bits of fur."

His muzzle moved on her back in a little half nod. Okay, cautious maybe on the brushing.  


The ripple of ribs under his coat jogged her back to the fact that she’d been about to feed him, and she pulled back enough to see his face. "Breakfast?"

His ears perked up, making her smile again.  


"Breakfast," she agreed, and gave him one more pat before standing up.

  
  


There was a note on the counter -  _ At Small Business Owners meeting, call if you need me - _ and a check of the clock confirmed it was early afternoon. Sunday, if her calculations were correct.  


She stared into the fridge, then turned to Spike. "What do you eat? I mean, what are you supposed to eat?" Bread and pie couldn't be a healthy diet for wolves or vampires… he had chosen that rabbity creature from the options in the castle kitchen, though whether that was because it was the right food or simply calculated to cause the most upset was debatable. "Sheep? Or…" she scanned her fairy-tale knowledge, "little pigs? Oh, no way, I am  _ not _ feeding you baby pigs. Sausages? Or, like, there's all that dog food they advertise as being 'for the wolf inside'..."  


Spike twitched his head back, frowning.

Right, no, he didn't have a wolf  _ inside _ , and dog food was probably kind of insulting, "Blood? There's none here, but I could go and get some? Or sheep. Lamb. They're at the same shop." She was asking too many questions again, tripping over herself in her rush. She closed her mouth and gave him a sheepish smile.  


He stood watching her, eyebrows slightly squinted and the beginnings of an amused smirk on his lips.

She took a breath and started over, with single, simple questions, "Do you need blood?"

Single, small shake of his head.  


"Do you need meat?"

He tilted his chin in a 'maybe' gesture.  


"You like it, but you also eat other things?"  


Nod.  


Okay, this was working. She looked at the contents of the fridge again. "I could make you a sandwich, to start with?"  


Cautious nod.  


"Alright, good."  


She held up ingredients to be nodded to or shaken at, until she had ham, peanut butter, and bread set out on the bench. "Together?" she asked dubiously.  


_ Obviously,  _ Spike’s expression said.  


She put them together and made them a pile of sandwiches each, then picked up the plates and found herself stuck again; sitting at the table might be awkward for him and too weirdly formal for them both, but plonking his breakfast down on the floor was wrong in a different way. Instead, she carried them outside to the back porch, sitting herself down on the top step and putting both of their plates down on the wood. Solved.  


Spike dropped down onto his stomach on the porch and picked up a sandwich, vanishing it in seconds. She was barely two bites into her first one before his plate was clean.

"More?" she asked.  


He shook his head, licking crumbs from his lips, then looked out over the back lawn with mild curiosity.  


"I feel like I'm asking too many questions," she said apologetically. "And yes, I do know you can look after yourself. It's just… I don't know. Different when you can't complain. I feel unfairly powerful." And rambling on about it to him probably wasn't helping any. She gave him a lopsided smile and bit into her sandwich again.  


After answering it with a small one of his own, he rested his head down on the porch and closed his eyes.  


Right. He was probably still tired. And the coastal warmth and gentle sun felt wonderful after her few days of fairy-tale cold; she could almost be lured into stretching out on the boards beside him and napping the afternoon away. But she had things she needed to do. Responsibilities she'd neglected. She ate the rest of her sandwiches slowly, drawing out the pocket of time, then tiptoed back inside and picked up the phone. 


	16. Filling In

Friends reassured, thanked and apologised to, showered and dressed in freely chosen clothing at last, Buffy pocketed her wallet and returned to the back porch.

"I'm going to the butchers. We need some stuff anyway. Do you want to hang out here, or…?"   


Spike stood up, stretching out his arm-legs on the way, and padded over to her.   


She ruffled his ear. "Okay. I'll just lock up."

They were two turns before Main Street when an explosion of high-pitched barking made her jump, whirling towards the sound. It was half a block behind them, throwing itself against the end of its leash in a fury of yapping; a shin-high ball of wiry fur and seething jaws.  _ Not a demon. Just a dog. _ Attached to a human-looking woman who was barking back at it as she tried to get it to be quiet. She had to be a new arrival, or a tourist; dogs were extremely uncommon in Sunnydale, owing to their instinctive distrust of vampires and therefore swift endings at the hands of, and no one in their right mind would walk one this close to the cemetery and dusk. The residents might refuse to admit it to themselves, call it respect for sacred ground, but they knew - if you let your dog wander near the cemetery, bad things might happen to it.   


Which was probably what was about to happen to this one, because it had torn its leash free and was barrelling towards them with a tiny, yappy snarl.   


Buffy turned around, ready to grab Spike and… well, maybe hold him up above her head, because this thing hopefully wouldn't be able to jump that high and she was  _ not  _ letting him slaughter some poor woman's pet, even in self-defence.   


He'd moved before she grabbed for him, leaping onto the five-foot stone wall of the cemetery beside them and sitting down there with a haughty, superior expression.   


She turned back to the dog - which, she'd been attributing Spike’s speed to vampire enhancement, but damn, this thing could cover ground swiftly for its size - eyed up its approach, and stepped forward to stomp on its trailing leash as it threw itself at the wall. The dog came off its feet with a strangled yelp that had her cringing sympathetically, but a second later it was throwing itself forward again, barking and jumping against its restraint. She should probably try to grab hold of it somehow, but its foaming little mouth was snapping at the air before it and, nope, her fingers were staying clear unless it seemed liable to get anywhere.   


Spike watched with lazy nonchalance as the thing's owner ran up, refusing to pay the cacophony below him any heed.

The woman scooped up her dog and held it to her chest, where its voice finally dropped to a steady growl. "You should have that beast on a leash!" she snapped at Buffy.   


"I'm sorry,  _ what?" _ Buffy asked, her own hackles rising.   


"It scared my poor Christopher! There are rules, you know, and people like you can't just flaunt them because you feel like it!" she shouted, standing her ground and shooting a disgusted look at Spike.

"You should learn to hold onto yours!" Buffy snapped back. "And where the hell do you get off calling Spike a beast? He's not the one launching an attack on someone who was minding their own damn business!" She pointed a finger at the woman and her armful of savage little hellbeast. "Take your nasty self and your stupid little dog and fuck off, before I bite back!"   


The woman huffed and sniffed in shocked offence, then spun on her heel and marched away. Buffy watched them go until they'd rounded the corner, then turned back to Spike, still seething.   


He was laughing, tongue lolling casually in his open jaws and a sparkle in his eye.   


She waved a hand in the direction the woman had gone, pulled an exasperated face, then dropped it with a huffy sigh. "Thanks for not biting it in half," she told him, managing to sound mostly sincere.   


He snorted, as though the suggestion he would lower himself to engaging with such a ridiculous foe was below him.   


"I know," she said, then added with a final surge of anger, "but I almost wish you'd eaten  _ her, _ stupid woman! What was she even thinking-"  _ walking a dog in vampire territory.   
_

Spike was still laughing at her as he jumped down, but she ignored it to ask, "That’s what happened with the castle dogs, isn't it? They didn't like a strange vampire wolf coming in?"

He looked at her sharply, then tilted his muzzle in a question.   


"Angel told me. Complained about how you killed all the _nice_ dogs, and that I should be careful if I see you because you bite."

He huffed a snort of dark amusement, lifting his muzzle in acknowledgement for her answering. Then schooled his face into very false innocence, shrugged one shoulder slowly, and turned his lip up in a smirk.  _ Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.   
_

"Alright, keep your secrets," she grumbled lightly.  _ And your shield of big badness. _ "Just tell me this; did you ever bite him?"   


He lifted his eyebrows up and down in a self-satisfied,  _ yes. _

She fought not to grin. It would hardly be appropriate. Turning away, she started walking towards town again. 

  
  


She emerged from the butcher's with a bag of wrapped meals for the 'dog' who'd sat outside the window, and a slight feeling of chagrin from the lecture she'd been given.   


"He says you need a balanced whole prey diet of raw meat, bones, and organs, absolutely no bread, and definitely no ham. But peanut butter is okay, as long as it’s not artificially sweetened, because then it's poisonous- ours isn't, is it?"  _ Crap _ . "We'd better go and check."

Spike rolled his eyes at her, sarcastic amusement heavy in them.

"I know, I know, you're not my dog, or a dog, and you can eat what you want… I just don't want to look after you wrong." She felt her cheeks warming, and looked down at the bag in her arms as she walked.   


A cold, wet nose poked her arm, and she looked over to find him watching her with softer eyes.   


Adjusting the bag to one arm, she rubbed around the base of his nearest ear again, the way he liked. The sense of inadequacy stirred up by the butcher's comments faded; she was being ridiculous. "I've got to head over to Giles's soon," she told him. "Fill him in properly. Talk to Jenny about that book. Do you want to come, or is it going to be too frustrating listening to me tell it all wrong?"

He nodded; once, twice.

"Come and be frustrated, then," she confirmed. 

  
  


"Buffy, I had no idea," Jenny said in apology mode as soon as she opened the door. Ah, they'd saved the wet book then. "But…" she went on, uncomfortable, "it does sound right, for them and for what I know of the curse."

"Oh," Buffy said.  _ Oh _ . Relief lifted a cracked and fragile weight from over her head, relaxing her shoulders. And only part of it was for Jenny's innocence. "Um, good."

"Rupert's just run to the store." Jenny stepped aside to let them in, watching Spike with a hint of unease. Which he of course responded to by dropping his mouth open in that sly grin full of sharp teeth and adding an easy swagger to his steps. Buffy ignored it; she'd only ordered him not to hurt anyone, and if a bit of posturing made it easier for him to deal with the multitude of restrictions he was handling rather admirably, then he could posture away. Besides, Jenny would soon see it for exactly what it was.   


"You read it, then?" Buffy asked, sitting down on the couch. Spike jumped up to fill the rest of it, tail by her thigh and front paws dangling at the edge of the other end as he rested on his elbows. He looked almost too big, like he'd somehow stretched himself to fit every bit of available space and then some.   


"Yes," Jenny said, sitting down in a chair opposite. "I'd like to-" her face tightened, "well, I  _ ought  _ to, contact my uncle, ask him if he knows anything about a possibility of their curse being broken and how to recast it if it ever is, but I wanted to speak to you first."

Buffy nodded. Enyos, the sombre and, she suspected, cruelly heartless uncle who had arrived last year to unmask Jenny, order her off on some secret family business, and generally kick off the explosion that kept hitting until Buffy had been unmasked herself to her mother, Giles had been both brokenhearted and fired, Willow and Xander had been caught cheating on their respective others, and everyone was firmly in the land of the betrayed and/or betraying. Somehow, it was all Enyos's fault. "Why?" she asked. "Not- I mean, why the hell would someone make a curse like that and then put in a clause to break it? I get the part where they were mad and wanted him to suffer, but how can unleashing Angelus on the world again be a rational punishment for a moment of not-suffering?"

"It's not rational," Jenny said. "They serve vengeance, over any petty little details like right or wrong, protection or caring. It's why I had to walk away. Angel's behaviour would be a punishment for Angelus to carry, an embarrassment, so the breaking of the curse would only begin a new level of retribution in their eyes. If people have to die to bring that about, so be it." She made a disgusted, angry little sound and turned her face away, recovering her composure. In her steady teaching voice, she explained, "Having a catch, a breaking mechanism built into the curse, would have been necessary to build it as solidly as they did. It… it's like the knot that holds all the ends together; gathers the weaknesses inherent in such a powerful working and directs them to a single point, strengthening the rest. A failsafe. Every curse of any lasting power is built around one." She sighed. "But they could have made it known. They could have given us the knowledge to prevent it being activated. Buffy, if you'd… You were in very real danger, that year, and I am so sorry I didn't tell you who I was. We could have gone to the elders then, demanded they tell us everything they knew."

Buffy shook her head, brushing it aside. It was done, and she wasn't about to pick up the vengeance flag that Jenny had turned her back on. "Speak to your uncle. We're going to need answers ready for Angel."

"Will you go back for him?" Jenny asked, her voice neutral.   


"No," Buffy said quietly. "But he might come back on his own. In five years, or when Drusilla has no more use for him." Or maybe not, now that she'd stolen Dru's other pet.   


"Drusilla?" Jenny asked, looking like she was bursting with all the questions she'd bitten back that morning.   


Spike’s head turned to the front door, ears alert, but he made no move to get up.

"Giles?" she asked him.

He glanced at her, lifted his eyebrows in confirmation, then turned the back of his head to the door again and stretched out even further.   


_ Point made, we own the couch.   
_

"Drusilla," she replied to Jenny.   


Giles set two packets of cookies on the table before heading into his kitchen; she must be forgiven. She opened the chocolate chip ones and picked one up, eyeing the chocolate.   


"I  _ know  _ you shouldn't eat these," she told Spike. "Do you want something else?"

He shook his head, then perked it up in the direction of the kitchen as the kettle started whistling.   


"Tea?" she asked. A hopeful glance of his eyes said yes. "Giles, Spike needs tea," she called over. "Unless it's bad for dogs?"

Spike’s eyes turned back to glare at her, ready to fight over this one.

"He  _ needs tea?" _ Giles asked slowly, coming to stand in the kitchen doorway.   


"Yep. Isn't it, like, expat ceremonial?"

"Oh of course, he's a  _ British _ wolf, how terribly remiss of me," Giles muttered, disappearing back into the kitchen.   


A couple of minutes later he was back, reluctantly setting a mug on the coffee table in front of Spike before taking a seat and pulling out a notebook. "Now, please do tell, why am I serving tea to William the Bloody while he sheds all over my couch?"   


Spike wasn't going to be able to drink it without getting up and lapping all over the table. She reached over to pick it up, waved it at his front paws, and put it down between them when he tucked them up to hold it.

"What?" she asked Giles, who was staring at him doubtfully. "This is normal compared to the rest of the week."

Giles settled back in his chair with a sigh, ready to leave his questions until the end. "It's not bad for dogs," he said in aside. "I used to own a little jack russell terrier, Helen, who had a cup every morning with her egg." He shook himself, and the suspicious look returned. "But  _ he _ is not a dog."

Spike lifted an ear at him with a cooly cynical expression on his face.  _ Sitting right here. _

She slap-patted him a couple of times on the thigh next to her in warning.  _ No fighting.  _ "The mirror dropped me into a pond in this forest…"   


She stuck to brief, flat recounting of facts, filling in details when asked. Giles's pen rapidly filled pages in his notebook, and murmurs of  _ fascinating _ and  _ how intriguing  _ punctuated his rising academic interest in the details of fairyville.   


"Spike could tell you more," she said, after her hundredth  _ I don't know _ . "If he could tell."   


Spike gave her a steady, closed-lip look.

" _ Could _ ," she reiterated to him.  _ I didn't say you would.   
_

He turned his lofty nose away, appeased, and she ruffled the fur under her hand.   


"So then I took its head and heart - which,  _ gross  _ \- back to the queen, who told me to come back at midnight and name my prize." She hesitated over what to say next; everything that had gone down between her and Spike felt both private and impossible to explain in any way that Giles or Jenny would understand. She wasn't sure  _ she _ fully understood it. But certain facts needed to be made clear; he had given her real, concrete help, at no real hope of benefit to himself and plenty of risk. Ergo, he'd more than earnt a chance to be treated with less bias from certain long-ago events that they'd all walked away from- _ that my team all walked away from.  _ An uneasy little misgiving filtered up, interrupting her thoughts. She glanced at Spike from the corner of her eye, made a mental note to ask him about it later, and looked back over at Giles.  _ Where was I…  _ "She said to name it thrice, by three names, but I only knew two of Angel's. Is his given name even on record? Because I definitely don't remember ever reading it."

"Ah, not that I'm aware of," Giles said.   


"It's not," Jenny added, more confidently. "If it were, it would be part of the family legend. There's a lot of power in-"

"The names of things," Buffy finished, with a smile. "I was careful with mine."   


Jenny smiled, obviously pleased that some of her repetitions on the basics of safety around the magically inclined had stuck. Buffy might not be the best caution-girl when it came to stray cats or the scent of herbs, but 'don't tell the bad guys your full name' was advice she could stick to.   


"Anyway, Spike gave Angel's to me, in the interests of fairness since I'd done the work. But I couldn't leave him there like that. Angel's- well, not  _ un _ -happy, from what he bothered to let me see. Spike was. And there was the whole matter of that book. So I gave Drusilla Spike’s name - three names - to claim his freedom as my reward, and we ran back to the pond and jumped in. Voilà, in your bathroom." The furry thigh under her palm relaxed infinitesimally; if her intuition was correct, the last thing he wanted was the (once) existence of his collar being broadcast. She swept her fingers over his fur in idle strokes, relaxing it further.   


"I don't suppose you asked  _ Spike _ how he came to be bound to the queen's service either?" Giles asked.   


"Nope," Buffy half-lied; she hadn't  _ asked  _ him. "But I think Angel- he gave me the impression when I said goodbye-" she looked at Spike, hoping for input- "that he'd made some sort of deal that Drusilla would send him home if he gave her seven years of service." Spike tilted his head slightly in a wavering gesture. "Anyway, he might show up someday, and I told him I'd try to find answers for him to come back to if he did."

"And…" Giles glanced at Jenny, discarded the idea of appealing to her for help, and set his pen down to adjust his glasses.   


"We're over," Buffy told him, saving herself having to watch him fumble through asking about the less-job-related elephant in the room. " _ Long _ over. I couldn't… I needed to see him again to realise it. And I did. It's fine." The kind of fine that meant rather mortifying when she looked back at how devastated she'd been two years ago, and at how long she'd clung to the dream of him returning to make everything magically better, but, fine. She'd get over it.  


Giles nodded, sympathetic and uncomfortable but as quietly supportive as he'd been of her efforts to find Angel and bring him back.   


Jenny leaned forward slightly, grabbing the open floor for whatever she'd been mulling over in thoughtful silence through the end of the story. "Do you mean he's-" she asked, before including Spike in the question too, "are you _ ,  _ a  _ living  _ wolf?"

"Yes…" Buffy said, something in Jenny's tone giving her pause. "Why?"   


"He's- he was- you were, a vampire. It takes far more magic to imbue life where there was none than to change something's form. And taking that life away again…" She bit her lip, falling silent.

"Is it going to be a problem?" Buffy asked tightly.   


Jenny looked down at the table. "It's not something I'm very comfortable with doing."   


"We can't make him stay a wolf," Buffy countered, her voice hard. "That's just killing him more slowly. And I promised I'd do everything I could."   


Spike’s eyes were darting from her to Jenny and back, his posture tense and ready to leap into movement.   


Buffy thought for a moment, then added, "And he's not supposed to be alive in the first place. You'd only be… putting things back how they were supposed to be."

Jenny watched him pensively, then gave Buffy a hesitant nod. "I'll do the reversal spell, anyway. The energy there is directed at cleansing and restoring, not destroying. But if it doesn't work… let's just hope it works."

"Seconded," Buffy agreed, then turned to Spike.   


He dipped his chin at Jenny in a tiny nod, his mouth all tight with caged words he couldn’t free.   


Giles looked like he had words of his own being held back; pursing his lips on them, he hid behind flicking back through his notebook. A minute later his attention had been solidly redirected, and he stood up to retrieve a book from the nearest shelf. She'd probably given him enough  _ fascinating  _ details to keep him up past bedtime researching various aspects of them.

They left soon afterwards, Giles reminding her that Kendra was keen to cover patrol alone again that night. Buffy vacillated; the familiar worry over letting someone else risk themselves doing her job warring against the knowledge that Kendra would be enjoying the hell out of the light action Sunnydale reliably supplied a holidaying slayer who was far beyond competent to handle it. And a little over the memory of being called out by Spike for her reluctance to share, the burden and satisfaction inextricable. Kendra had to fly out tomorrow. Buffy let her have the night.   


Spike stopped on the pavement outside Giles's flat and shook his coat from nose to tail, an easy smile returning to his face with it. She didn't bother trying to smother her own, because really, he was too adorable when he did that, and the more she saw it, the more she agreed with the sentiment; take all the lingering moments of tension from a difficult interaction and consciously shake them off, then move on unencumbered.   


She'd planned, once alone, to reassure him that they  _ would  _ re-transform (re-form?) him somehow and soon, regardless of Jenny's apprehensions. But watching the loose-limbed bounce of his steps again, she set the words aside, as he'd done with everything inside Giles's walls. That was for later. Right now, they were walking through the comfortable evening air with nothing on their tails and nothing in their path, and that was worth enjoying.   


At her letterbox, he stopped in place deliberately, then continued a few steps past it on the sidewalk.   


"Where-" Okay, how-what-why-where and when were pointless. "Do we need to go somewhere else?" she asked.   


Head shake.

"Then come in?"

Head shake.   


Off her probably somewhat stumped look, he shook his head to himself in frustration, then lifted one front paw in a wave, clenching his jaw at the necessity of such a gesture.   


" _ You _ need to go somewhere?" she asked dubiously.   


Relaxing, he gave a quick nod.

"On your own? I could come with you- not that you're not fine on your own."

He shook his head in light decline.   


"Oh. Okay." Trying not to sound as rebuffed as she felt, she asked, "What, you have wolf business to attend to?" Then again, maybe he did.   


He tilted his head, equivocating.

She felt herself frowning; she couldn’t exactly order him to stay. "Alright. Just- be careful?" He probably no longer even had the cover of fog to fall back on; they'd stopped in a cemetery on the way to Giles's for him to try it, but all his howling had accomplished was to set off answering barking from several directions in the distance. She hadn't been able to muster the anger needed to completely rule out her own fairy-tale enhancement persisting, but it felt unlikely.   


He gave her another brief nod, sarcasm in it, then moved off down the sidewalk.   


"Spike?" she called after him, making him stop and turn to her. "You're coming back, right?"   


His ears dropped from their alert prick, and his mouth opened in an honest smile. He nodded several times, tail wagging with it.

"Okay. Well, have fun, or good luck, or whatever."   


With a final wag of his tail, he turned away again and trotted off into the night. 


	17. Missing things

_ Dogs need pats. Dogs love their owners. Dogs lose their heads with excitement at the offer of a leash.  _ So it was only logical that he should be having second thoughts over his refusal to be collared by her. Excusable, explainable. And she obviously felt the same way, given her offer and request to pat him as a dog. Denying what was only natural between her humanity and his caninity would be futile and frustrating, while giving rein to it seemed to saturate the very essence of his furry self with a sense of comfort and pleasure unlike anything else. And she enjoyed it just as much; now that they'd been given permission, her fingers gravitated for his coat every chance they got, her eyes softening happily as she swept her fingers through it. Or, mostly over it. He would have to let her brush it into something more pettable.   


But second thoughts or otherwise, his collar was gone, and she had the very opposite of plans to produce a new one. It'd been important to him once, that he be restored to himself; on some intellectual level, it still was. Yet it no longer drew the longing from his heart it once had, that pulsating organ seemingly content exactly as it was, thank you very much. But it didn't matter what it felt. It couldn't speak, and logic had to prevail. Buffy didn't want to own a vampire inside a dog, or a wolf, and he could not remain so stupidly powerless. Even if there was something unexpectedly freeing in not being expected to talk, to explain his actions; something comforting in the way she listened to his body language.   


Therefore, he was going to enjoy it while it lasted, and prepare for when it ended. His undeniable feelings of… of canine devotion would surely vanish with the tail, then he would have a much simpler relationship to adhere to: he was a vampire. She was the slayer. He had promised to leave her town and give her no cause to regret the favour.   


Ideally, he'd be leaving in his own car. He headed for the old factory. 

  
  


It had been barely a remote possibility, but lo and behold, the DeSoto still sat in its corner on the factory floor where he'd left it. It was covered in dust, as was everything; some portion of such probably the remains of Dru's abandoned minions.

_ Do try to keep up, _ whispered a ghost of that night, conjured by the scents of this place and these things.

_ Why? _ he growled back.  _ It didn't do me any bloody good.  _ Recalcitrance emboldened him, and he padded out onto the main open floor where that final party had been. Furniture had been knocked around, a chair broken, and the flowers Dru had wailed over were empty husks of dead fragrance on the floor. His wheelchair stood against one wall where someone had set it aside. He looked from it, back over his shoulder to the car, then huffed a grumbly sigh. One of them would work. Somehow.  _ God, please let it be the car. _ He felt certain he would be in no slayer-related danger if he was forced to beg sanctuary while his human-shaped body healed itself, but the idea of being demeaned so far was depressing. She'd sodding pitied him enough already.   


A window at the far end of the room was broken and boarded over; the one which would have been behind the mirror. It drew him, nose sniffing at the edges of the board to satisfy his curiosity. The scents were old and vague behind the aroma of wood and years of dirty air, but identifiable nonetheless; Buffy, Giles, a teenage boy that was probably that floppy friend of hers. She must have secured the place on the off-chance it proved essential to the portal's reforming. Scenting attentively as he was, he couldn’t miss the faint aroma of her dried blood from behind him, and he trailed it to the spot on the floor where she'd lain. It had stained the concrete there in shades of rust red, as visible to human eye as canine nose. The casual disregard with which it had been ignored in the cleanup efforts rankled at him, prickling over his hackles in its callousness. Perhaps he need not attribute so much of her concern to pity; her form had suffered the abuses heaped upon it by those in power until she no longer blinked an eye at them, and his unasked role was one she could do something about. Even if that something meant recreating a vampire…   


The living state of his body had been alarming, at first, but had soon enough blended in with all the other alarming things about it. Returning from it was bound to be another headspin, but a hundred plus years of familiarity had to outweigh two. Fuck, he hoped he still had his coat - his  _ leather _ coat - that it hadn't worn away with each piece of fur shed, or been burnt up in the spell that had transformed him.   


It couldn't be fur. His fur was white.   


Shaking off the worries of the future and ghosts of the past, he glanced at the car again, then slipped out to prowl the hellmouth night and remember what it was to be an earthly creature, thoughts winding out through the breeze.

  
  


By morning, Spike still had not returned, leaving her torn between leaving early in a show of indifference or waiting until the last minute in the hope that he would show up. Either way, she had to make it to her classes today if she was going to have any hope of passing. In the end she chose the middle ground, detouring through the two busy central cemeteries, looking out for… nothing. Just doing her job. And if he happened to pop out of the trees, she would tell him she was late and keep walking. But he didn’t.   


Kendra had well taken over her bed in the dorm, only grumbling awake reluctantly when Buffy sat on her feet. The spare mattress had been folded away again for the sake of floor space, Willow joking slightly pointedly that Buffy didn't seem to live here anymore anyway.   


Buffy hugged her into almost-forgiveness, then accepted her mountain of notes and missed handouts with enough grace to garner the rest of it. Shovelling the essentials into her bag, she reminded Kendra to drag herself out of bed by plane time and headed to class. 

  
  


Having spent much of the night tracking a couple of army-dressed groups of… he still wasn't sure, soldiers of some kind, as they snuck about in the bushes and pointed handheld devices at caves, Spike looped back to the factory in pursuit of a more tangible bounty.   


She needed someone to save, he got that now, after taking it out and turning it over from every angle. Something she could pull from the ashes of her fairy-tale dream and say,  _ it wasn't what I expected, but I did help someone. _ And she'd chosen him to be that someone. He couldn’t do the things he might have doggishly wished to for her; couldn't wear a collar, and couldn't help her carry hers. But he could let her be his saviour. Hell, she already was, but she wasn't going to be content with her efforts until he stood on two legs and spoke proper English again. And in the meantime, he could at least pay his way.

The bedroom he'd once shared with Dru had been looted at the surface level, drawers pulled out and books missing. He wondered, briefly, what had ever happened to Dalton; if the extra dose of brains he'd been blessed with had been enough to prompt him to flee, books in hand, before the slayer's cull of this place, or if she'd found and dealt with them both. Dru's abandoned dolls stared down from the dresser, their hard glass eyes accusing. He laughed at them, if the harsh sound coming from his throat could be called such. _You and me both, you wretched sods._ _She's a whole kingdom of pretty new toys._   


Digging at the underside of the mattress produced results - wallet, half a pack of smokes, the bleeding awful magazine he'd read cover to cover several times while lying here incapacitated. The smokes were tempting, their dry, leafy smell enough to have him inhaling deeply in appreciation. Something told him Buffy wouldn’t be keen to extend her assistance to holding one for him, however, and starting again while his ability to continue was limited would be an excessively stupid move. 'Sides, his lungs weren't really built for it, right now, to say nothing of his lips. He left them there and picked up his wallet.   


Halfway to the door, he glanced at the dolls again, the strips of fabric bound on various mouths, eyes, wrists. Considered scenting at them a final time, some ritual of nostalgia for the memories here. Then scoffed at it all through his mouthful and padded out. He'd given all the goodbyes he needed, and he was missing someone.

He slipped through the gate into her backyard, a trickle of misgiving rising. The house was quiet, closed, and a careful listen and sniff at the back door concurred; she wasn't home.  _ Bugger.  _ It was a weekday, confirmable by the teenagers he'd seen waiting for a school bus as he'd slunk and snuck back here, so presumably Buffy had classes to go to. Or friends to catch up with. Or a watcher with even further questions to give answers to.   


He couldn't traipse all over town looking for her; someone was bound to notice a giant, unaccompanied wolf stalking the streets, even in Sunnydale. And he'd never be able to slip into a campus building unnoticed. Retreating to the bushes at the back of the yard, he lay down to wait. 

  
  


Joyce put the last bag of shopping down on the counter, then glanced out of the window before her. And did a double-take. There were two eyes watching her from under the lilac bush. And a little black nose, and two pointy ears, and the rest of a very large, white-furred wolf. This must be their houseguest. That, or the zoo had a problem again.

Opening the back door, she called out cautiously, "Spike?"

The wolf nodded in confirmation, his expression almost a little nervous. Spike, then.   


"Would you like to come inside?" she asked, with a friendly smile. "Buffy’s at college, but I was just about to put the kettle on."

Stretching out from under the foliage, he came slowly across the yard and onto the porch, the tip of his tail wagging hesitantly as he watched her. His front feet were scuffed with dark earth from where he'd been lying. And possibly digging. She would have to talk to him about that, but not yet. He was obviously feeling rather lost, and who could blame him after what Buffy had told her?   


"Wait there," she said, "I'll just get a towel for you to wipe your feet on." Glancing over her shoulder in case he went to leave, she grabbed an old one from the hall closet. When she returned he was on the lawn, scraping his feet across it to clean them. She folded the towel in half and laid it on the doorstep, then waved him towards it encouragingly, blushing slightly at the awkwardness of using toddler-appropriate gestures to what was, if she understood correctly, an adult man.   


He padded up to the towel and began wiping his feet dry with careful studiousness, while she returned to unpacking the shopping, not wanting to loom over him. After a minute he stood still on the towel, peering in the door with his eyebrows raised in question.   


"Come in," she said quickly. He was  _ too _ polite. She turned back to the bench, speaking lightly to try and put him at ease, "Perhaps you could teach that to my daughter. All the nagging in the world can't seem to stop her stomping mud in here regularly. Would you like a cup of tea? Or a bowl of water? Or a bowl of tea. I'm sorry, I'm lacking in experience at serving… those with muzzles."   


He smiled a little - if she was reading his expression correctly; it looked like a smile - and sat down on the floor near the door, watching her.

She held one hand up to the side and said, "Tea," then raised the other and said, "water. Or choose neither for something else." Buffy had mentioned that he drank tea, but whether she had thought to offer him coffee was unknown.   


He indicated the tea hand with an eager-looking point of his muzzle.   


"In a mug," she asked, waving each hand to indicate their new labels, "or a bowl?"   


After a moment's thought, he chose mug.   


She felt herself blushing a little again, at the realisation that his lack of verbal skills had triggered her into offering this-or-that choices as though he were a  _ difficult  _ toddler. Buffy had more than taught her certain strategies of negotiation during that early year when every question had been met with,  _ No. _ She took down one of the wider mugs and set it beside her own, chattering to try and fill the silence and bring him into the loop. "I've taken the day off after yesterday's meeting ran so late. Those women," she pulled a face. "They're so willingly ignorant of what goes on in this town. I suppose I can't really talk, but most of them have spent their whole lives here and still can't accept that this is a high-risk area for business insurance-" she zipped her lips on her tirade and looked over at him; he wouldn't want to listen to her moan about the ridiculous politics of Sunnydale's Small Business Owners committee.   


Spike twitched one of his ears, tilted his muzzle forward slightly, his eyes attentive and curious. It seemed to add up to,  _ go on…   
_

Well, she could hardly ask him about himself. And he was probably missing human conversation, however one-sided and odd-topiced. From what Buffy had said (and not said), he'd been rather lonely for a while. "Muriel's pushing for us to switch providers, en masse, if they try to raise their premiums this quarter," she explained with a little hesitancy.   


Spike smiled (unmistakably), and sat back a little, as though settling in to listen. Small town politics it was, then. At least while she got their drinks ready.

  
  


Buffy might as well have stayed home for all she took in during Lit, because it turned out there was a big difference between knowing you shouldn't worry about a man who had taken care of himself successfully for more than a human lifetime, and actually stopping yourself from imagining his furry little self stuck down a muddy pit or being dragged into the pound to never emerge alive. It was like a real-world Disney effect, and what was with all those movies, anyway? Not that he was really  _ little;  _ he was huge for a dog, and taller than the wolves at the zoo. Although, maybe they were bigger up close. She'd never stood next to one.

"They don't put dogs to sleep here just for having no collar, do they?" she asked Willow.   


"Huh?"

"At the pound. Like when they caught Tramp."

"I don't know," Willow said, her face worried. "Does he really look like a dog, though? I've heard they won't come out for wolves, after…"

After all the false alarms for a howling Oz, and the run of not-so-false alarms that were demons of various kinds. "Not really. He looks like a fairy-tale wolf." She glanced down, conscious of the possible lingering fragility of Willow's emotions on the topic of missing people-wolves. It was only last month that Jenny had helped them narrowly avoid a magical mishap when Willow attempted to spell herself over Oz.   


"It's okay," Willow said, reading her discomfort. "I'm moving-on-girl. Besides, your wolf-person's only a problem when he's  _ not  _ a wolf. Totally different thing."

"Moving-on-girl?" Buffy asked, faux-innocence on her face. Willow had seemed a little… like she had a happy secret, before mirrorville week.   


Willow shrugged, cheeks tight with the grin she was denying. "Maybe."   


"We're coming back to this," Buffy whispered, dropping the volume as the short film they'd been supposedly watching came to an end.   


Willow shook her head, suddenly shy. "I'll tell you when there's something ready to tell."

"Alright," she said suspiciously. "As long as he's not, like, a mantis-person or something."

"Nope," Willow said, sounding anxious. "No mantis-people."

"But you're okay?" Buffy asked, her worry-radar pinging.   


"Yes," Willow said, relaxing. "Anyway, I'm sure Spike’s fine. He's probably doing the hellmouth demon tourist thing. Or perhaps he's found somewhere else to stay. Doesn't Willy rent out a room occasionally?"

"Sometimes," Buffy equivocated. Maybe he had. It wasn't like he was  _ obligated _ to stay with her. But he'd said he was coming back, and she hadn't thought he'd meant on Friday evening for the de-spelling. She checked her watch again; five minutes to freedom. She'd ring mom to see if he'd turned up at home, then maybe try the dog pound. 

  
  


"Yes, he's been here all morning. We've just been watching Passions. He really is rather nice company."

"Mom!" she snapped, in a surge of anger shaped from the relief that the wolf she had spent her morning worrying about had been happily tucked up watching TV the whole time. "He's- a vampire! You can't just- he's not  _ company!" _   


"You told me he was safe to have staying with us," Joyce protested. "It would hardly have been polite to make him wait outside until you get home. It's supposed to  _ rain _ this afternoon."

"Well perhaps he should have thought of that before he stayed out so long," she snarked back.  _ It's not like he was going to shrink if he got wet. Stupid wolf. _ "Look, I'm going to the airport with Kendra, then I'll be home. Just… Don't let him…" She sighed. "I'll see you then." She hung up the phone.   


"You have some very strange relationships," Kendra teased dryly.   


"Ha. Ha." Her sarcasm came out harsher than she'd intended, and she flung herself down on the bed sulkily while Kendra finished checking her suitcase. "How's yours? I feel like I've hardly seen you."   


Kendra gave her a wry smile. "What does one expect when one vanishes for a week?" The smile softened. "It's good.  _ Very  _ good. We're going to get serious on the flat hunt when I get home. Everything so far has been too small or too far away, and I refuse to settle for less than both a weapons room and a short walk to use them."

"Good for you," Buffy said warmly, her ire easing. "I hope you know you  _ have _ to drag him along next time. I need to set eyes on this mystery man who makes you go all gooey, and threaten him with the traditional dire consequences if he screws up."

"Ze tiny angry American is perhaps more of a deterrent than she realises," Kendra teased. She arched an eyebrow, "He knows your opinion carries weight."

"I wouldn't really threaten him," Buffy pouted, slumping her shoulders. "In fact, I'm kind of over the whole traditional  _ anything _ . And since when do you listen to me anyway?"

Kendra shrugged. "When you occasionally talk sense. But he will come. He is shy, but he will never let that stop him standing tall beside me. Just ask Zabuto," she laughed.   


"Tell him he sounds very brave," Buffy said. "And  _ ze tiny angry American  _ shall restrain herself. I need some vicarious happiness."

"Aye. And I shall tell him he no longer need worry about his grasp of Californian slang, for your latest pickup speaks only in barks." She grinned cheekily and stood up her bag, just in time for Jenny to knock on the door. 

  
  


Buffy slid back into the Beetle after waving off Kendra, then turned to look at Jenny when she didn’t move to start the car. Jenny glanced at her, busied herself with the keys, and glanced at her again before turning the engine over.   


"Watcher-assigned difficult topic alert," Buffy ventured.   


Jenny smiled down at the steering wheel. "You could say so." She put the car into gear. "He wanted- No, that's not true." She sighed. " _ I  _ had some concerns. Rupert would never have pulled them together on his own. I love the man, but he does have his blind spots. After we discussed it, I told him I would speak to you today."

"About…" Buffy prompted.

"I saw the way you were with Spike. And he with you."

Buffy shifted in her seat, defences rising.   


"You care about him," Jenny continued. "I don't know what you left out of your account last night - and that's your prerogative - but it's obvious that you two have… become close." She swallowed, eyes firmly on the road. "It makes me worry that he may take advantage of that closeness when he changes back. Use it to hurt you. Or at best, throw it back at you. And that if he attacks you, you might never see it coming."   


"He wouldn't hurt me," she said in a quiet, solid voice. She wasn't sure when it had become true; when threats had given way to an unspoken understanding. Certainly long before he'd stopped issuing fabrications of them.

Jenny pursed her lips uncomfortably. "I'm not trying to imply that he's been deceiving you, or that you've been taken in by his fluffy tail. Right now it may be that he truly does intend to do us no harm. But if we do this - if we transform him back into a vampire-"

" _ When, _ " Buffy cut in.

"When," Jenny conceded, though she sounded far from committed. "Buffy, he's not going to be the same. The Spike you've come to know is a wolf. Or a dog in the shape of one. His thoughts, feelings, desires; all are subject to corruption by his body. By the same drives that enabled wolves to first begin coexisting with humans. Take all that away, and he will be again the same murderer that he was."

It was bordering on the same argument she'd put to Spike himself yesterday; he was dog-shaped, and dogs had certain needs. But it had been more than half pretext as she'd made it then, and she would have to admit so to herself now. "No," she told Jenny.  _ You're wrong _ . She knew it, felt it in her gut; what was in Spike now had always been there, flickering below the glossy surface, and had only been pushed out into her view by the changes to him. This him  _ was _ him. He had to be. "He's not…" she began, trying to find words Jenny would understand for things she didn't. "Experiences change people. He's not the same person he was two years ago, but the fur on his back didn't do that. And, yes, okay, in some ways he is - and will be - exactly the same; he'll still be the nonconforming but strangely principled Spike I made this truce with. He won't break it."

"Buffy, he probably has a  _ soul _ right now," Jenny said quietly. "Not a human one, of course, nothing that would cause him to feel guilty, or ashamed of his past. But a dog's soul, a wolf's soul… they have a great capacity for empathy, for love. It has to be affecting his feelings. I know you're fond of him right now. I wanted you to be forewarned. If you transform him back, he's going to change."   


"That’s kinda the point," she said weakly, brushing Jenny off with an attempt at humour.   


"I'm sorry," Jenny said softly. "I know it's a lot to take in. Just… think on it for the night before you reject it out of hand? I'd hate to see you get hurt."   


"I'll think about it," she said tightly. "But we're still changing him back."

Jenny nodded lightly, agreeing to leave things there for the night, and they sat in silence until she pulled up on Revello Drive.

"Thanks for the ride," Buffy told her, and closed the car door. 

  
  


She let herself in the front door, and found Spike standing next to one of the living room chairs, watching her. His tail thumped slowly against it, but his head and ears were low and he made no move to come forward. He looked- well, she knew dogs weren't supposed to be able to feel guilty, and neither were vampires, so perhaps what he looked was 'scared that he was in trouble'.   


"Guess you heard me on the phone," she muttered.   


_ Thump, thump. _

She sighed, lifted off her satchel and dropped it beside the door. He was making  _ her _ feel guilty. "I was worried about you," she mumbled, toeing the strap of her bag into place. "I know, it's stupid, you can look after yourself. But worried Buffy is bitchy Buffy. I didn't really mean you should have to stay outside in the rain."

He padded over, head still held low and his big blue-grey eyes staring up at her earnestly from it as he stopped in front of her knees. His tail ceased its subdued wagging and sank down to point at the floor, and a tiny whine whispered from his throat.   


"You look sorry," she told him.   


He tilted his lip into a lopsided little smile and nodded his head slowly.   


"You shouldn't be allowed to be this cute," she told him, smiling, and swept a hand around his ear.   


As if that had granted him a withheld permission, he immediately stood up on his hind legs and wrapped the front ones around her waist in a sort of hug, made awkward by the balancing of his weight on his back feet.   


She stepped into him, unhooking a hard paw from her hip and letting him lean his furry chest and weight into her instead, turning it into a real hug. Her arms wrapped around his ruff and shoulders, hands smoothing over the fur, and his tail immediately began wagging again in relaxed sweeps. "I'm glad you were okay," she told him. "I promise I'll try not to panic next time."

He only snuggled in closer, making her laugh and scruff up his fur.

It suddenly felt much harder to confidently assert to herself that he had no soul. _ How could he? _ had turned into,  _ How can he not? _

A door opened upstairs, and Spike pulled away carefully and dropped back to four feet to turn to the staircase as her mother appeared.

"Buffy. Spike." She cast a shrewd gaze over them, then turned to checking her handbag for her keys. "I'm just popping down to the town library. Spike, did you see where I left that page with the book you recommended?"   


Spike was  _ recommending books _ now? Apparently so, because he nodded towards the dining room.

"Oh yes," Joyce said, pulling out her keys at last and heading in there.

Buffy lifted her eyebrows at Spike, but he ignored her, watching Joyce go past then turning and padding back into the living room.   


She crossed her arms, waiting until Joyce returned, a piece of folded paper in hand. "How," she asked, abandoning the  _ why _ for the more pressing question, "did he recommend a book?"

"Honestly, Buffy, the man can read and write," Joyce said with a shade of disappointment. "I won't be long."

_ Oh. _

It was So. Damn. Simple. Abashed, she waited until her mother's car had started up outside, then followed Spike into the living room.

Lying on the floor, he was chewing at one of his thumb-claws in a rather contrived manner.

"You didn't think of it either," she stated, leaning on the wall as she watched him.   


He looked up from the foot that had him falsely engrossed, his face as sheepish as hers felt.   


She snickered, ducking her head and shaking it herself. "For people with preternatural skillsets, we can be incredibly dumb."


	18. Took the words right out of my mouth

A stack of paper sat on the coffee table next to an uncapped felt tip pen and a few facedown sheets with inkbleed spots showing through them. She reached for those first, but a strange little growl stopped her hand before she touched them.

She turned to Spike. "Did you just  _ growl _ at me?"

He shrugged uncomfortably.

"You don't want me to read your private correspondence with my mother?" she asked, lightly teasing as she withdrew her hand. "I suppose that's fair. I just wanted to see." She gestured to the pen.   


He rolled his eyes, looking theatrically hard done by, and sauntered over to the doorway, glancing over his shoulder for her to follow.   


In the kitchen, she found the bottom door of the fridge cleared of magnets, a whiteboard marker waiting beside it.   


Spike picked the pen up in his mouth, pulled the lid off with his hand-paws, adjusted the grip he had on it a couple of times, then wrote in big, jagged-line capitals, "SEE?" Sitting beside it, he stared up at her archly with the pen still held in his teeth.   


"Yes," she granted. Then added optimistically, "It's a great idea." But he didn’t exactly look excited by it. "But you've been doing this all day?"

Nod, half-shrug.   


Squatting down, she relieved him of the pen and patted the side of his neck, thinking. "I know I would find it frustrating. And maybe kinda embarrassing, with the whole having to use your mouth. But you shouldn't be. Embarrassed. I think it's brilliant. Maybe later on we can come back to it?"  _ I miss your constant stupid chatter. _

He cocked his head, considering, then took the pen back and shouldered her away.   


Okay, he probably didn't want her hanging over his shoulder while he scratched out each letter. "I need to sort out my bag," she told him, and went to retrieve it.

He was still writing when she returned, so she dumped the bag's contents out onto the breakfast bar to begin organising. Eventually he stepped back, putting the pen down, and she came around to read.

It was much tidier, letters carefully formed and set in straight lines. " _ Makes brevity a necessity. Hard work. Useful with mum. You, not so much." _

"That’s not how you spell 'mom'," she told him, delaying a real response.   


He shook his head in a chastising fashion.

"I know,  _ sodding Americans _ ," she muttered. "But- I can read patiently. And without being a smartass." She sounded whiny, but dammit, it kinda stung to be rebuffed for not possessing whatever it was that had encouraged him to open up to her mother.   


He shook his head again, this time clearly frustrated. Picking up the pen, he wrote in a quick scrawl, " _ YOU UNDERSTAND _ ."

"You want me to understand that-" No, his glare was only deepening; she was on the wrong track. Obviously.  _ Ohh. _ "I understand  _ you _ ," she confirmed, smiling. "So you'd rather save your mouth for mom and anyone else who doesn't speak vampire-wolf?"   


His ears relaxed out to the sides, and he dipped his nose gratefully.   


"Yeah," she agreed, crouching down to give him another pat, scratching her nails down his side as he leaned into it. "This part's easy, isn't it." Easy to replace words with. Easy when they didn't have to explain it to each other in human terms. Limited to the next four days, and then everything would change, because she could never do this with a vampire, even if he was the same on the inside.   


She needed to tell him what Jenny had suggested. In fact, she needed to discuss several Big Serious Things with him. But if he was worn out on the writing front… The last week had been exhausting, in every way. They were both owed a break from confrontage.

"So what do you want to do for the rest of the afternoon?" she asked. "I need to patrol tonight, and I have a hellmouth-worthy amount of homework to catch up on, but that can wait.  _ Please,  _ give me a reason to make it wait."

At the word  _ patrol _ his head lifted, and he leaned in for a final scratch before picking up the pen again with a short frown.   


"Hang on," she told him, and grabbed a dishcloth to wipe off their previous conversation. "Go."

" _ Soldiers, _ " he scrawled, then looked up at her in question.   


"You saw them?" she asked. "Group of guys in military garb, weird-looking guns, skulking around in the dark?"   


He nodded once, still looking curious.   


"I've been chasing them around for weeks," she told him. "They always vamoosh near campus. I can't figure out what they're up to, but I don't like it."   


He gave her a serious little nod, then turned back to the fridge. " _ Willy's _ ."

"He knows?"   


Shrug.  _ Maybe.   
_

"Okay, we'll go there tonight."

Spike dropped the pen, clearly more than done with it.   


She retrieved it gingerly, replaced the lid, and stood it on the floor by the fridge in case he thought of any more burning words he couldn’t express without it. Then she wiped her slobbery fingers on the bottom of her pants surreptitiously. Yeah, it probably wasn't the most comfortable way to write.   


"I could make you some flashcards?" she asked suddenly, as the idea struck. "Then you'd only have to point. For Friday maybe, or if you want to use them with mom."

He perked a single ear up, making him look half interested.   


"Ooh, I know, we could put swear words on them? Then you can tell Giles,  _ Share - Bloody - Scotch _ instead of pretending you're not interested when he waves his glass around."   


He grinned and did that voiceless little huff of a laugh, making her snicker back.

"I saw you. So is that a yes?"

He gave her a diffident little shrug that looked like he was keen on the idea but couldn't bring himself to ask her to do it.   


"Okay," she said, smiling. "I've got some cardboard somewhere."

He followed her to her bedroom, where she was arrested by a flat, fur-covered circular spot on the end of her bed. "Someone's been sleeping in my bed," she said, half annoyed, half distracted by the too-easy fairy-tale reference. She wasn't going to feel truly free of that place until he was back to himself.   


Spike shifted his feet, looking away and saying nothing.   


She sighed, letting go of her vague notion of _vampires and wolves sleep on the floor._ There was something sweet about the fact that he'd sought it out in her absence. Even if it was just because it was more comfortable than her attempt at a wolf-bed. "You'll have to let me give you a brush before you get on it again," she told him sternly. "Look at how much fur there is."

Spike’s eyes lifted back to hers, and he swished his tail slowly in what she was going to call his apology-look. Then he glanced around, casting for something, before padding back over to the door and waiting for her to follow.   


He led her across to the bathroom, where he cocked his head at the tub and then up at her in timorous suggestion.   


"You want a bath?" she asked, frowning. He'd seemed pretty adamant with his refusal yesterday. "Or is it, you're willing to have one now?"

He nodded once and in a vague manner, again unwilling to commit himself to a clear request.   


"Okay," she said with a shrug of her own. "Let's do that."

  
  


His fur seemed to magically repel water, only the very surface getting wet despite how long he stood under the showerhead. When she turned it off, the longest hairs stuck out in strange dripping spines while the underneath layer poked through all fluffy and dry.   


"You're like a sheep," she told him, frowning. "All woolly and rainproof." And probably aided by two years of grime. Ick. She'd stopped registering the doggy smell of him, but it was strong again now, as if activated along with the water-repelling. Reaching into the bathroom cupboard, she picked up the mechanic's detergent that was her fallback for all manner of slime and gore. "This, then shampoo, then conditioner, okay?"

He gave her a closed-lip little smile, uncomfortable but acquiescent, so she poured a thick line of it down his spine.

The detergent cut through his waterproofing, saturating him further and further until he seemed to have shrunk to half of his usual size. Soaked to the skin, his ribs and elbows became more prominent, warning her hands to be gentle and soft. He was too skinny, she was sure, and it tightened her stomach with a flush of anger that might have been strong enough for her to test out her fairyville abilities, were her fingers not busy rubbing his fur into a lather. He seemed to enjoy it, relaxing slowly until finally he let his eyes drift closed and his ears flop into an outward-pointing look of comfortable pleasure. It was easier with his eyes shut; she forgot about feeling self-conscious over what she was doing, and let her mind blank out beyond the here and now of each stretch of fur and warm body under hands. The ankle-deep water in the bottom of the bath turned a muddy brown, then darker and greyer, and a line of rust-red foam ran down from his neck to add to it; whether transferred unicorn blood or from the barbs of his collar she wasn't sure - probably both - but she made a point to be careful there when it came to brushing him. Fur came off him with every touch, an impossible amount of fur, so much so that she had to keep checking he still had some attached. When she pulled the plug and turned the shower back on to rinse him, it coated the sides of the bath and piled up at the end. Mom wasn't going to be impressed. But hey, it was better than last year's orange, gritty mucous that had left stains on the tub for six months.   


After two rounds of shampoo, she drenched him in conditioner, and the mass of rough, grabby fur became instantly sleek and slippery, tangles sliding free under her fingers and coating her hands in yet another layer of fur. Rinsing the last of it out, she turned off the shower again and stretched her back out, stiff from crouching over the tub for so long.   


Spike stretched himself, twitched his shoulder like he was going to shake, thought better of it before she could shout to stop him, and looked up at her, dripping.   


_ Now what?  _ He was very,  _ very  _ wet. As was she, soaked down her front with grubby water and shampoo. She swept her hand over his back, pushing a trickle of water from it. "Um. Most of it shakes out, right?"

He wobbled his head in a hedging gesture.   


"Okay. I'll go open the back door, you run outside, then you can shake all you want while I rinse off? And then I'll blow-dry the rest."

He glanced at her sodden front again, then nodded his agreement.   


"Okay. Wait there."

She went downstairs, opened the back door, then called his name, and he took her instructions literally, running from the bathroom to the back yard. "I'll be quick," she promised, then propped the door open and went to rinse off. It felt wrong to just… shut him out there. Another evil dog lady might come. Or he might get cold.

  
  


Buffy came back with a towel and a hairdryer, dressed in dry clothes. His wet, heavy tail had started wagging as soon as he heard her coming, and he didn't try to stop it. There was no need. He couldn’t speak. Physically couldn't let himself break and demand to know what she meant with her goddess's touch and gentle words, with her tender smiles and caring looks; what she thought she was doing and where it would end. He absolutely could not ruin this by opening his mouth and trying to make it other than it was, so he wagged his tail, and let himself love her boldly with all the complex simplicity of his beating canine heart.   


She stood on the porch and looked at him with something contemplative and almost shy on her face, and he thought it at her;  _ I love you, Buffy. God, how I love you.  _ But she couldn’t hear, and it was better that way. Safer.  _ For these few brief days, just let me be your loving, loyal hound. _   


He made her laugh while she dried him, squirming and rolling about as she blew his fur in every direction, and the sound fell like gold dust to sparkle in the static of his coat, so he goofed around more. He was a bleeding wolf, for Christ's sake; no vampiric conventions could tell him it was wrong to make happy little canine sounds when the slayer rubbed his tummy, and it would have been both self-defeating and impossible to try to look serious when she started brushing out the fur behind his ears. The very factors that had seemed to thrust a deeper isolation upon him at the castle - his lack of hands, his tendency to reveal his intents through body language - had granted him access to this otherwise forbidden contact with her, and he could no longer regret their persistence into the real world. They were  _ liberating _ . His wagging tail made her smile; it was a thing worth having.   


"I don't think fur is  _ ever _ going to stop coming off you," she said eventually, leaning away and sweeping a hand over him to flick off a few surface hairs. She pouted up her bottom lip, adorably put out by her inability to rake his coat into compliance, then shrugged it off. "Maybe it's a spell thing."   


He lifted his muzzle up and down in agreement.  _ Course it is, luv.  _ He was fairly certain it wasn't, but the truth didn't matter.   


"At least it's clean now. Does it feel better? Or weird? It's sort of gone all fluffy…" She pulled the corner of her mouth down, becoming concerned now for what he might think of however ridiculous it looked.   


He shook it out again, nose to tail, then dropped his mouth open in a happy smile for her. It did feel better.  _ He _ felt better. Lighter and brighter and, yeah,  _ fluffier _ , so it was only fitting that his coat matched his insides.   


"Good," she said, her own smile back. 

  
  


While Joyce cooked dinner, Buffy cut card paper into a stack of business card-sized rectangles, then giggled and snickered with him as they made a pile of boring words -  _ I, You, When, What, Why, Where, When, Want… _ \- and a pile of useful ones -  _ Bloody, Fuck, Scotch, Bastard, Asshole. _   


He forgave her spelling.   


But either she'd seen it on his face, or she'd written it as a setup, because the next one she held up said  _ Sodding Americans,  _ making him laugh again.   


Adding it to the useful stack, she considered them both piles then said, "We can't make all the words; it'd take forever to find one. If you think of any more you might need, write them on the bottom of the fridge?"   


He nodded, content with what was there. She'd included plenty of determiners, pronouns, high-frequency words, so he wouldn't sound like a fool if Joyce asked him something, or if he had to speak up at the watcher's on Friday. He could write out any specific terms he needed to go in between; hell, he was the most literate canine the world had ever seen, and should probably feel bad for letting Buffy attribute so much of his reluctancy to hold a written conversation with her to the awkwardness and difficulty of it. But he couldn't regret it, because writing… well, he wasn't certain he wouldn't still manage to make a fool of himself even with the forethought it necessitated for each and every word. Long-ago experience had more than proven his ability to do just that. No, this unspoken closeness was sweeter than words, and he was holding to it in any way he could.   


Joyce went through the same fluster Buffy had - did she seat him at the table, or feed him from a bowl on the floor? - but eventually (and with the assistance of his new dictionary) it was settled that he eat his own food outside, then join them at the table to share the meal she had ensured was dog-friendly just in case. With his newfound appreciation for the freedoms of wolfdom, and the undeserved level of concern both Summers ladies had for his feelings, eating out of an old pot on the back porch felt like a caring accommodation they'd made, rather than the insult he might once have made of it.   


Joining them at the table afterwards, he put his best manners on display, pushing Buffy into desperately trying to suppress a fit of giggles at the mockingly regal demeanour he soon adopted. She shoved food at him until he had turned her down several times, and the look of evaluation in her eyes between fits of giggles warned that she was far from done fussing over him. He wondered how she had space left for it, between the million slaying and college-related issues she skimmed over briefly in dinnertime discussion; and he didn't wonder at all, because he was starting to believe she could do anything, any number of things, and balance them perfectly.   


He couldn’t do much for her in return, but hopefully his nose and ears would prove helpful in locating those GI wankers later. And he had… He'd begun having second thoughts about dropping his wallet in her lap; it was a gesture too fraught with probable misunderstanding and offence. At the very least he was going to have to explain his intention by it in clear words, and he was less than certain he could do so to the degree required before she took it the wrong way. 'Wanting to help' could too easily look like 'making this into a business relationship' as soon as money became involved. But dogs didn't have wallets. Stick to the doggy maxim. It could stay buried under the lilac bush, at least until he'd thought it through further. Besides, his feet were all nice and clean now. As was all of him, and the feel of his clean coat made the soft look that filled her eyes when she petted him ever deeper and more content. So he could do that. 

  
  


Spike led her first to the caves he'd seen her mystery soldiers investigating, then to a well-hidden, recessed, vault-style door in the patch of forest behind campus. There was no one about, no fresh trails from it he could detect; maybe they had Mondays off.   


She was all set to step out and try the handle on the secret door, even had an excuse ready if she found anyone behind it, when Spike disagreed, cutting in front of her with a growl, ears flattening back.

She brought her hands slowly up to her hips and glared down at him. "No?" she asked, though his meaning had been perfectly clear.

He stared back cooly.

"What, has your watcherness progressed into telling me to scurry back to the library every ten minutes for updated orders?" she bit out. "Because that never worked for Giles, and it won't work any better for you."   


His face darkened and his fur bristled up a little in irritation, but he said nothing. Obviously.   


She considered pulling out the notebook and pen from her back pocket and waving them in his face, but didn't think he was any more likely to argue properly then either. "I'm just going to try it. If it opens, I can play the dumb blonde freshman who got lost in the dark."

He made a low, huffy growl sound and glared off to one side, stubborn and grumpy but not going to forcibly stop her.

Now that her initial affront at being given a sharp order was easing, she began to reevaluate his stance. His head was low, ears still pinned back, and it penetrated that what she was seeing was closer to fear than bossy anger. "You're afraid of them," she murmured.   


He jerked his head up, affronted himself now.   


"Okay, not  _ afraid," _ she hastened to add, raising her hands placatingly. " _ Wary. _ All with the caution. Why?" No, stupid question; writing on a tiny notebook out here in the dark would be more than an exercise in frustration. She had to assume he had good reason; he hadn't let fear stop him even when it would have been sensible for it to, as evidenced by the way he'd not hesitated to throw himself into the battle with the demon-rhino. "I know they have some sort of penis-substitute shootey things they cart around. But they can't just go around blasting at civilians. You can wait here, out of sight."

He huffed again, sounding resigned, and moved around to her side, ready to accompany her.

_ You stupidly, stubbornly, manipulatively valorous boy.  _ "Oh alright," she growled. "Fine, you win for now. We'll go see if Willy knows anything." The door would still be there tomorrow.   


His ears sprung back up, and as he spun around to retreat, his tongue darted out to flick the back of her hand in what felt like a thank you.   


She rolled her eyes and followed him.   
  
  


"Woah woah, kid, you can't bring that in here!" Willy protested as they approached the bar. "Or, alright, I guess  _ you  _ can, but you'd better not be setting me up for a health code violation!"

Buffy swept her gaze around the room, lingering on the plo'ditren demon with its array of orange spines and a… okay, she didn't know what that one was, but the dangling two-foot-long ears and small goatish horns said demon. "Does Sunnydale even  _ have _ a health inspector? Because I don't think it'd be _us_ that they focused on in here."

Willy shook his head in short disagreement and waved at the booths. "Costume party. Religious sect. New kink. Take your pick." He pointed over the bar at Spike, " _ Dog _ . Clearly a breach of regulations."

"He's not a dog," she said flatly.   


"He is to the city council, whatever you call him. What do you want?" His eyes were watching Spike anxiously - much more anxiously than he ever watched her, and she'd threatened him for information on more than a few occasions. Huh. Willy - Willy who weaselled a living from the hellmouth's dodgy underbelly - was _scared_ of _dogs_.

She looked down at Spike, arching an eyebrow in speculation. He was just standing there. Yes, he was biggish, and bigger again with his tail held out like that and his shoulders kinda squared and lifted, but he was also fluffy and too adorable for her to tell him so. He was staring back at Willy in an idle, bored fashion, but as she watched, he opened his mouth to start panting softly, revealing his gleaming, wet teeth.   


She turned back to Willy. "Answer me quick then, so we can be on our way. These soldier boys. Playing war games around UC Sunnydale. What do you know?"

His attention switched to her properly at last, as did that of a few nearby customers who had been trying to quietly melt under their tables since her entry. He worked his jaw nervously, then edged a little closer to the bar, eyes darting to Spike and back. "They're not with you?" he asked cautiously.   


"No…," she said slowly, "why would they be?" She glanced down at Spike and said, "Go wait by the door. Watch out for this rumoured health inspector."   


Smirking a fang at Willy, he swaggered over to stand nearer to it.

Willy stepped closer and leaned his forearms down on the bar tightly. "Look, I really don't know anything-"

"So you're always telling me," she cut in brightly. "You know, they have community classes at the college. Perhaps you should check them out."

"Yeah, the day I finally have enough of being stood over while trying to do an honest-"

"Just get to it," she cut in, letting her gaze drift over the room before throwing Spike a bright little smile.

"Okay, see, no one really knows what they're up to. Started being spotted a few months back, hunting in their packs over that side of town-"

"Hunting?"

"Hunting," he confirmed. "Least, that's how it looks. They got them guns, electric things, like giant tasers. Had a couple of guys swear they've seen 'em take down demons with them, then rope them up and cart them off somewhere. Rumour starting to build maybe you were involved, some of them council bastards, maybe, but I didn’t believe it for a second, an' I told them so, I says-"

"Facts, Willy. What else?"   


He pressed his lips together, thinking. Probably deciding exactly how much he should share. "Look, it's bad for business, right? Word gets out further, might damage the tourist trade. I'm telling you everything. Other rumour says they're military, United States Special Forces. Hear things about a similar group, down in Texas last decade, used to grab vampires." Grabbing a rag from the counter, he stepped back and picked up a smeary beer glass, wiping it clean with jerky, nervous fingers. "I’ve seen enough movies. I don't want to disappear into some Secret Service prison over in Area 51."

Buffy tapped her foot, thinking. "That it?"   


He rubbed ineffectually at the glass a few more times, then put it down. "It's mostly Friday, Saturday nights that they're out. Maybe they got regular weekday jobs."   


"Okay." She turned to the rest of the bar. "Anyone else got anything to add?"   


A shuffle of ducking heads and suspicious looks, a whisper of a defensive growl or two. That would be a no, then.   


"Alright," she told the room. "Be that way." More than a couple of them - like that trio of vamps - wouldn't hesitate to try their luck with her if they came across her in the cemetery later on. But they always had a strange reluctance to start anything in here, as though there was some established cultural expectation of conduct in the place. Turning back to Willy, she waggled a pointing finger at him warningly, then left the bar.

"You big scary beast," she told Spike affectionately as they walked down the sidewalk away from the place.   


He was still smiling, and she crouched down for a moment to rough up his fur again, making his feet skip around playfully.   


"Frightening innocent bartenders," she added, having to fight not to sound disturbingly babying. It was too natural an impulse at the touch of all his soft fur and happy ears. She stood up again, reining herself in sternly before she could call him a good boy. "Come on. We'll do a round of the cemeteries then call it a night."

He wagged his tail in agreement. 

  
  


Sunnydale's cemeteries were resting peacefully, which suited him just fine, because he was suddenly having second thoughts about the whole 'save the world' business. It had not crossed his mind that in sharing his tip about the soldiers he'd be motivating her to go running into a whole new batch of trouble. Yeah, it should have, but, fuck, couldn't she suss out the situation from a safe distance? She seemed determined to throw herself headlong at any danger going, which, yes, he usually considered his own manifesto, but still. He'd been a vampire. She was living blood and fragile mortality, vulnerable in ways he was not- had not been. And therein lay the real kicker; he was too bloody inadequate as back up right now. The sight of her throwing caution to the wind and launching herself at the unicorn had sent his heart scrambling up into his throat in a jolt of undefined terror, and he'd known, known all too horribly as he leapt for the hideous creature bearing down on her, that he was utterly impuissant to the task of stopping it. All he had were a set of teeth designed for holding and tugging, and his meagre bodyweight to put behind them. He could  _ not  _ watch that play out again.   


And yet, the moment he regained his true ability to fight, he was going to lose this place at her side. He would have teeth designed to tear her slender throat open, strength enough in his hands to snap the bones in her neck. Instincts that told him to do so.  _ No. _ It'd be a soothing story to tell himself, but this feeling ran deeper than mutable instinct; down to the unchanging core of him and back out to every cell in whatever form they assumed.  _ I love you, Buffy. I don't know what it means, but I love you.  _ She had been willing to accept Angel, hadn't she? Just because he had a precious  _ soul _ and told her he was special.  _ I can be good. Maybe. _ Hell, he didn't even know what good meant anymore. Only that it wasn't buggering off to another dimension for seven years. 

_Who will watch your back if I leave?_ _And how can I walk away from your smiles?_ That one was easy. _She won't be smiling, you wanker._ She'd be frowning at the loss of her furry companion, and telling him to get the hell out. The slayer could not afford to consider a soulless vampire as an individual, let alone entertain the idea of befriending one. And a vampire should never be able to fall in love with a slayer. It was just the way things were. Or were supposed to be. _But they never were, were they?_ She was Buffy, had been from the beginning, Buffy who bloody inconveniently had to be the slayer and couldn't be otherwise, just as he was still formed and shaped in myriad invisible ways by an unlifetime of hunting her kind. _Christ, what a mess.  
_

"I wish I could ask you what you were thinking," she said, jarring him from his thoughts with a moment's panic that maybe he'd let something slip. But of course not; he couldn’t. And thank fuck he couldn’t sing either, because the song trickling through his mind today would raise all sorts of questions from her.

"Deep ponderings on the ends of the universe, or wondering what we should eat when we get home?" She lifted her eyebrows at him, then shook her head and looked down with a little sigh. "Sorry. I just… okay, I kind of miss listening to you yabber."   


" _ Grr-rff," _ he said.   


She giggled and ruffled the fur on the side of his neck fondly. "You adorable dork-" She snapped her mouth shut, a hint of colour rising in her cheeks.   


He made another little woofy-bark-sound and wagged his tail. She could call him whatever the hell she wanted. Dropping his elbows towards the ground, he did that ridiculous bowing-thing she had laughed at while drying him.

"Adorkable," she said, rolling her eyes and giggling shyly at the same time.   


Right, he was going to have to get her a puppy - a real puppy - so she'd have something to pour all those loving touches and happy laughs on once he was-  _ No _ .  _ Be more dog. Enjoy the now and fuck worrying about the future.  _ He made another silly woofy sound.  



	19. Settle Down

Buffy changed into her pyjamas in the bathroom, then tiptoed back across the hall. It was midnight, or near enough, and her anxiety about being caught sneaking in after patrol hadn’t quite faded, unnecessary though it was these days.

Spike was studying the spines on her bookshelf when she came in, his body language almost… bashful. Which was encouraging, because,  _ holy fuck I told him he could sleep on my bed and now it's bedtime.   
_

It wouldn't mean anything. He would sleep on top of the covers, obviously. Down the end, on one side, where he had while she was at class. It was a big bed, so it wouldn't be like they were  _ sleeping together.  _ Just sleeping, on the same furniture. And people slept with pets all the time. It was supposed to be, like, good for your immune system. Or blood pressure. Something. And he was a very  _ seemly _ wolf, which was hella weird to try and mesh with her memory of the brash and cocky Spike who'd, uh,  _ stroked _ himself while talking about  _ manly weapons _ . But if she were forced to walk around naked but for fur, she'd want to do more for modesty than tuck her tail over her… her undercarriage while being groomed, as he had. She would have hidden under the bed and never come out.   


Giving him a quick smile that felt as shy as he looked, she flicked off the light and scurried into bed, then wriggled over to the far edge and faced the wall. "You can get on," she told him, aiming for trivial in her tone. "Or not. We're free choice on sleeping positions around here."  _ What the fuck am I saying?  _ She closed her eyes.   


She felt the movement through the mattress as he set his front paws on it, then he jumped up, turned in a circle, and lay down on the far bottom corner.   


_ Okay, good, now go to sleep.   
_

Everything she'd shoved aside throughout the day instantly came roaring back, a clamouring pile of demands for her brain's newly-freed snippet of attention. She hadn't even looked at her homework. She needed to ring Giles about the soldiers. She needed to stop willfully ignoring what Jenny had told her and pass it on to Spike. He had a right to know, and she should have filled him in straight away. And she needed to…   


"Are you still awake?" she whispered.   


His tail thumped on the blankets.   


Crud, she'd probably woken him up if he wasn't. Dogs weren't exactly known for their ability to sleep through sounds. Then again, Spike wasn't exactly known for his patience with stupid questions, and he'd wagged his tail, so… She opened her eyes and rolled over to face him. The white furry ball of him blended into the blanket, the darkness-deepened eyes watching over his tail the only spots of contrast.

"Before you got turned into a wolf," she whispered, "did your legs work?"

His eyes widened, narrowed, then he pulled the end of his muzzle out from under his tail and rested it on top. He gave his head a tiny shake.   


"Oh." A big, cold stone of something very like guilt appeared in her stomach, weighing her down into the bed. "I'm sorry," she said in a distressed little whisper.  _ I did that. Because I was too chicken to finish things properly. And Drusilla transformed his body into a working one, and I stole him away to undo it. _ "Spike, I didn't…"

He uncurled from his ball, wriggling out on his stomach until his nose was close to her chest and he was… was he trying to lick her under the chin? His tail made a fast, quiet thump-thump-thump on the blankets behind him.

She slid her arms up out of the covers to push his dog-breath muzzle away. "Stop, stop, I get it," she told him quickly, though she wasn’t sure she did, but… it was okay, somehow.   


He seemed to catch himself, and jerked his face back from hers, flattening his chin onto the bed beside her instead. His alert eyes were watching her like he might yet change his mind and start trying to lick her again. Or like he might need to jump off the bed and start pacing around.

She thought it over for a few breaths, and settled on the most practical question. "Will they be healed when we undo it?"

He lifted one of his front legs a little and dropped it again in a shrug of  _ I don't know _ , looking down at the blanket with a private little sigh. He didn't seem surprised by the suggestion.   


She reached a hand for him, then hesitated and put it down on the bed nearby instead, fearing it might be invasive to be grabbing at him right now. "I would still look after you," she said hesitantly, certain she was going to say something wrong here. "I mean, I know you can… If you needed- wanted my help…" God, she sucked at wordage, and prethought, and she didn't know if she should be focused on frantically thinking through the possible ramifications of what she might ramble out or on how the heck to avoid accidentally belittling him.  _ Just cut to it. _ "I won’t let anything happen to you, okay?" she promised in a low, steady voice.   


He looked up at her again, then nodded his head in a calm, accepting little movement, a wobbly half-smile on his lips. He knew. He was uncertain, and it must have been weighing on him privately, but he knew she wouldn't abandon him if he needed her.

"Good," she whispered. "For what it's worth… well, I'm not sorry I didn't dust you properly that day. I kinda like you still being around. Sorry I can't be sorry?" The damage was temporary, one way or another, and that had to beat either of them having been more permanently taken out in that long-ago fight.

His eyebrows pulled down into a wry frown, but his smile became one of genuine amusement and he shrugged lightly. No hard feelings, then. The end of his shrugging motion dropped the side of his head into her hand, she curled her fingers around the base of his ear to rub at it the way he liked. And the way she liked. He was like a warm, soft, always-handy stress reliever.   


"There's more," she told him, before her eyelids could start getting too heavy. His already had.

He lifted an ear, opened his eyes a little.  _ I'm listening.   
_

She let hers drift shut, because yeah, they didn’t need to thrash this all out now. She was all comfortable and relaxed, and he could poke her with his nose if he needed her to look. Better just to let him have it to ponder too. "Jenny - and Giles - think we're friends because you're a wolf. Because you're affected by being a wolf. Because you've got a wolf's insides too. Something. That you wouldn't be… that you're not yourself right now."

She felt him huff a tiny snort of tense laughter.

"I guess you do look a little different, somehow," she said lightly. "Maybe it's the tail." She sighed, dropped the joking. "They think you might have a wolf's soul in you. Affecting your emotions."

He stiffened slightly under her hand, becoming very still.   


"I…"  _ don’t want that to be true. And… _ "I don't know. I think… there's a part of people that doesn't change. Doesn't go away when they get…" God, she'd staked so many of them. Neighbours and peers and unknown strangers and, fuck, former friends. No time for hesitation. Someone dies, demon moves in, whatever they were is gone with their human soul. Even though the newly risen demon shares their memories. Memories were never enough to stop them attempting to slaughter everyone.  _ But a threat to Drusilla was. _ He'd loved Dru, without question, as vampire and canine.  _ And he respected me _ . He wouldn't forget that. She sniffed. "Anyway. I told her we have to change you back, and that you won't turn on us like some rabid… vampire. Goodnight." She pulled the covers closer around her shoulders with her free hand, and willed herself to go to sleep. 

  
  


He didn't have any sodding wolf soul parts. The suggestion was preposterous. A tempting excuse, but preposterous. And if he did, they weren't bloody strong enough. He'd felt the urge to ditch her company at the castle, to get out and patrol the length of his borders, but had he bloody listened to what was likely good sense?  _ No, you nit, you trailed her around instead like a lovesick puppy. _ And now he was here,  _ in her flipping bed _ , being called her  _ friend _ , and she was… she was cuddling him in her sleep. Okay, he'd wriggled his way under her trailing arm, but she'd been the one to sleepily pull him closer with it. 

There was trust, in the touch of her hands. It wasn't insane to hope that it was trust in more than a wolf, was it? Or less than. Because, if he had to be truly honest - the way one did in the dark whilst everyone else slept - he had landed here far too easily. People made assumptions, ascribed a set of beliefs, when they looked at this disguise he wore.  _ She  _ made assumptions which she had no right to; that he would behave other than he should, that he was someone worth protecting. That he was somehow more than what he was. It was a double-edged sword, because chasing after every moment that he felt something very like aspiration to prove her beliefs justified came a reminder of one kind or another that she had only ascribed them to a wolf. Yet… she was still going to peel the disguise away. So perhaps it was not so insane to hope that her trust could extend down through it.

She was warm and soft in sleep, breath tickling the back of his neck again, only this time he could not dream of running from it. She was  _ his, _ for a few days, his to keep warm and watch out for and comfort with this more benign, wordless body. What canine instincts he had, what vampiric ones were buried underneath, what long,  _ long  _ buried ones were under that; right now all of them aligned with the ungraspable thing that was his core self, for he loved her, and all of him understood that. 

  
  


What felt like bare seconds after she'd last told herself to stop thinking and just go the hell to sleep, a knock on the door and call of her name jolted her awake. Daylight. Right. It was morning already.   


"I'm up," she called blearily at the door. There was a warm, furry body under her arm. The unfamiliar intimacy was wide-awake-making, but didn't feel wrong. It felt… safe.  _ You are so messed up.  _ She really needed to get a boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Anything that meant she wasn't clinging to a vampire-cum-wolf in the night, even if he did seem to fit in her arms like he was made to fit there.

She lifted her arm away to rub at her eyes, and Spike slid himself quietly off the bed, stretching and yawning on the floor beside it. He was cute when he yawned.   


"I have to go to school," she groaned, half to herself.  _ Urg.  _ Mornings like this, it was hard to remember why she'd chosen to go to college at all. Oh yeah; she'd  _ chosen.  _ Arguably wise decision or no, it was all hers. She shoved back the blankets and made herself sit up, and then get up, stretching her muscles awake like Spike had. Only without the whole downward-dog yoga thing.   


Spike opened the bedroom door with a careful move of his mouth, glanced at her over his shoulder in an almost-nod, then vanished through it.   


"Spike?" she called, crossing quickly to the doorway to catch him still in the hall. "You're not, like, leaving, are you? Not that you can't. But I mean, you'd tell me, right?" She felt ridiculous. It wasn't like they'd shared something; utterly platonic sleeping doth not an entanglement make. And he was a wolf. Except… it kinda felt like they had, and now he was running away.   


He furrowed his brows in that look that said, _yes, and you're being absurd_ , then moved closer to the wall and mimed cocking his leg at it, smirking up at her.   


"Oh," she squeaked, blushing. She had asked. "Okay!" She ducked back into her bedroom and closed the door, only a little harder than she'd intended to. 

  
  


When she came downstairs, he was sitting at a stool on the breakfast bar while her mother gulped down the end of her coffee. He looked like a circus lion, perching up there, waiting for his turn to jump through a hoop of fire. Or not. He'd probably sneer at it and keep sitting.   


"I've got to go," Joyce told her. "You'll be alright getting there?"

"I think I know the way," she said dryly.   


Joyce rolled her eyes and put down her empty mug. "I know. It's just nice having you here again. Sometimes I think I'd like to shrink you back down to that little girl I used to drive to school."

"Don't," Buffy said warningly, raising a finger. "Absolutely do  _ not  _ tempt the hellmouth, mother. We've got enough to fix." She nodded at Spike.   


"Well, you two have a good day. Spike, I've left the TV remote on the coffee table, and it's all turned on at the wall. Just make sure not to touch the VCR; I've set it up to record."

Spike nodded with that uber-weird politeness he put on for her mother, then she picked up her bag, kissed Buffy on the head, and left.

"You're going to hang out here?" Buffy asked, then squatted down to peer into the fridge, avoiding staring at him after that hopelessly needy-sounding question. Then realised she couldn’t see his response without watching him. She grabbed a pottle of yoghurt and stood up, watching him sidelong while choosing a spoon.

He half shrugged, half nodded, then looked at her yoghurt and licked his lips.

"You want one? Or something else?" She glanced down at the container. Mr know-it-all-butcher-man hadn't said anything about yoghurt.   


Spike jabbed his nose at it, so she pulled the cap off and put it down in front of him, then fetched herself another one. It was small. It couldn't be too bad for him. And she had to stop fussing over him like he wasn't capable of choosing for himself.   


The container started sliding around on the counter as soon as he tried to lick at it. "Hang on," she told him, then grabbed one of the heavier coffee mugs and sat the pottle in it. It stayed in place when he tried again, and she came around and sat down next to him.   


He licked up yoghurt with tiny flicks of his tongue, ears pointing forward at it in concentration, and she couldn’t stop the giggles that sprung up suddenly in response.   


"Sorry, sorry," she told him, waving her spoon. She should probably feel bad for laughing at anything about his situation, but it was too easy to feel light around him. Besides, his eyes were gleaming with their own mirth; he knew she wasn't laughing at  _ him,  _ per se. "Ack," she said, regaining her self-restraint. "It's just, this is even more insane than even  _ I've _ come to expect. But I'll try to control myself."   


He nodded, very soberly, and began eating again with slow, dainty little laps that seemed designed to make her lose it.   


She tapped his muzzle with the back of her spoon, smearing it with yoghurt, then swung off her stool and dodged around to the kitchen side of the island before he could retaliate. He only sat there licking it off casually with his crazily long tongue.

"I'll be back about four," she said. "Then I sorta told the gang I'd meet them at Xander’s tonight for pizza and fairy-tale storytime. Wanna come?"   


He looked extremely sceptical. And maybe a little insulted, in that way he tended to when she accused him of being anything other than big bad evil villain grr. Or had tended to. He seemed to have relaxed about it a little since they'd got back.   


"You can lurk in the shadows and growl if you want. But there's pizza. And they'll like you… I mean, they've sort of met you, except for Anya, but… that was different. Did I mention that there's pizza?" Dammit, this was probably a terrible idea. He was never going to fit in at a Scooby pizza night, and it shouldn't matter to her if he did. “Oh! Willow’s bringing her new friend. Some girl from the Wicca group. Apparently we're telling any random stranger about my secret identity now, which, what even, but Wil's vouching for her, so I guess-" Spike was nodding, with a carefully casual air. "You'll come?   


He gave her a deadpan look.  _ What I just said.   
_

"Okay. Cool." _Shut up, you sound like you have turned back into a desperate little kid._ She dropped her spoon in the sink and checked the clock. _Crud._ She still needed to swap her books out at the dorm before class. "I've got to get gone. Will you be alright here? Do you need anything before I go?"   


He shook his head, then opened his jaws in another yawn.

"Easy for some," she grumbled, smiling.   


Circling the kitchen/hallway/dining room found her her bag, and she ducked her head through the strap on the way back into the kitchen. Spike had relinquished his stool to stand in the middle of the floor, looking a little lost again.   


"Are you sure you'll be okay?" she asked. Hug him goodbye? Or was that weird?

He gave her a scoffing little sneer that did the opposite of inviting her closer, but was mismatched with his low hanging tail.

She  _ really  _ had to stop pushing at him like this. Of course he would be fine. And he could work the doors. Whatever ignored need she had to dote on someone could go back to wherever the heck it had suddenly surfaced from, because it was all kinds of inappropriate to try and channel it onto him selfishly. "Okay. Um. I'll see you later," she told him, and left. 

  
  


The front door closed, and his toes itched to run after her.  _ Wait, I didn't mean it, I'm sorry.  _ Wasn't even sure why he'd gone and snarked at her at all. Only, she had so many million things to run about doing, and he was bloody useless at helping with any of them, and when that thought had dampened the mood he'd been floating on all morning, he'd dragged hers down with it, putting that worried pause on her face. She was too damn good at caring about everyone but herself, and it had pissed him off. But he'd forgotten, in his moment of irritation; caring for someone else did help her. It was a need he recognised too well, and he should have remembered that instead of clashing the sword of his own version with it.   


He heaved a deep sigh at himself and the empty house, then went and peered out the front window at the empty street she'd vanished down. Missed her already. Fuck, it was stupid to be here, stupid to linger and dream, to scaffold insane hopes into impossible palaces. She didn't really have a place for him. He could keep her company for a few days, give her distraction while she settled into the knowledge that her own ridiculous fantasy had had a bullet put through it, but nothing else. He needed to stifle this rising urge to fight for more, and concentrate on loving her while he could. Or while he did.  _ Ha. _ Christ, if only this could be so simple as a few canine urges fucking up his feelings. No, his foreign instincts were suffused with it, permeated with it from the inside out, and it seemed laughable that he had dodged labelling it to himself for so long, as though that denial could change what he felt through and through. Maybe he  _ should _ try to tell her. Get it out there now while he was a less forbidden creature. Write it on the fridge, on her bedroom mirror, on the notepaper beside her bed;  _ I. Love. You. I think I have always loved you. And I always shall. _ She would laugh, titter, shaken and frightened, and this spell between them would break, and there would be no more pats, and no more sharing her bed, and she would closet herself away from this strange beast that wasn't itself and didn’t know what it felt. No. He could not tell her.   


Tired, suddenly, wearied by the inescapable tilt-a-whirl of it all, he padded back up to her bedroom and curled up on the bed, tucking his tail over his face lest his thoughts escape. 

  
  


He dozed, in the particular half-aware way he'd come to appreciate himself now capable of. Sounds filtered through his ears; the mailman coming and leaving, the fridge clicking on and off in its cycle, the VCR whirring to life to record. Time ticked by in its living-homeostasis-measured way, and he pondered what it would be to be ruled by the risings and settings of the sun again. What it would be to run from it, hide from it, feel his skin scorch and blister at the fire of it. If her fingers would burn him then too, and if that would be enough to stop him reaching for them. 

There were dreams, half-conscious ones, images swirling and blending with the sound of birds in the trees outside and the rustle of leaves; dreams of forests and running, of hot breath and cold snow, of the beating of drums and a tsunami that swallowed it all. He shook himself awake, unsettled by the tail end of that dream, and got up again. The day was beginning to feel unnaturally long, too much unused energy building in his muscles. God, he hoped the evening wouldn't be a complete disaster. 

  
  


"Anya's Xander’s girlfriend," she told him on the way, scanning her brain for the multitude of background that might help him put everything in place. "She was a vengeance demon, until last year. Now she's human. Xander you've met…"

He nodded a quick agreement. He was quiet tonight - quieter than normal - tense, she supposed she should say. Jittery. Maybe he needed a walk. A longer walk than the one to Xander’s. Or maybe he was picking up on her tension.   


"And you've met Willow. Her new friend none of us have met, so hey, we can throw all the suspicious looks at her. Although Willow said she's kind of shy. But really eager to hear about fairyville." She frowned; it wouldn't be the first time she'd wound up relating supernatural events as party entertainment, and sure, it was only to be expected when the topic was an entire dimension of fairy-tales, but… She looked over at Spike, who was taking a slightly more indirect route on her left as he zigzagged out around and over tombstones and sniffed at bushes. "You get that… I'll storify things, right?"

He nodded again, more gently.   


Yes. Of course he did. Sometimes it felt like he understood things no one else ever had; like he just got it, without being told. What it was like to have to… not lie, but selectively represent things. Omit the badness and the unwanted awkward sympathy that would accompany it. Hide away a whole part of herself, and push forward the bits they expected. Or it seemed like he did. Ack. It was only becoming more confusing the more time she spent with him. He would look at her with those tender blue eyes and this sort of soft, contented smile on his face, and a terrifying upswell of answering feeling would fill her chest, as nonsensical as it was unpreventable. It was hard, too hard, to look into those eyes and believe him incapable of empathy, of a nakedly human connection.

He nudged her thigh with the side of his head, prompting her attention back, then pricked a single ear up at her.   


"Sorry," she told him, smooshing his ear over with her hand, "I guess you've been bored today, huh? And you're all… frisky."   


His ears dropped by themselves at that, as though she'd told him off.   


"You're allowed to be frisky," she said quickly, then stopped and turned to face him, crouching down to his level. "Look. I know it's… that things are so different… that you're in a weird place. But you don't have to keep worrying about doing the wrong thing."

He wrinkled his lip up slightly, obligatorily showing his distaste for the notion that he might concern himself with what the  _ wrong thing  _ was. She didn't know why he suddenly  _ did _ care so much - too much - except that underneath all of his bravado was someone she was increasingly coming to realise was much more vulnerable than he had yet let her see.

"Just don't bite anyone," she said, lightening her tone. "Anything else, we can argue out, okay? It's not like you've never insulted me before, or got in my way, or just generally been a gigantic pain in my ass. If you get too polite I'll start thinking I've brought the wrong wolf home."

He ducked his head with a hint of an embarrassed grin, tail swishing to the side and back.   


"Come here," she murmured, and pulled his big fluffy neck into a hug.   


Barely-restrained energy resurfacing, he squirmed and nuzzled into her eagerly until she had to start pushing him back, roughing up his fur to tickle and tease him. That made him wriggle and skip about like some kind of deranged furry eel, until they were almost kind of wrestling in a strange exchange of slaps from her hands and barges of his shoulders.

"You silly boy," she told him on a laugh, then winced at the possibility it could sound derisive.   


Spike stopped bouncing and planted his butt on the ground to give her a look of admonishing retort.  _ Who's worried now? _   


"Alright, point," she muttered, then added in a loud whisper, " _ asshole _ ."

He grinned and jumped up again, cocky tail waving, and she slapped him playfully on the side, prompting him into a zooming circle around her legs. Yep, he definitely needed a run. 

  
  


"The Buffster!" Xander bellowed out when she stepped in the side door to his basement. "And…" his gaze travelled past her and he slowed his approach, before pulling her into a one-armed hug, "Buffy’s wild dog? He's not going to pee on all my stuff, is he?"   


She heard Spike's quiet scoff as he slid past them and stalked into the room.   


"No. So be nice."

"He-" Xander stammered, looking at Spike, "You can't just…"   


"Walk in? I told you, not a vampire. Or not  _ right now," _ she hastened to add, before Spike could go all existential-crisis-moody again.   


"Hello. Buffy. Spike," Anya said, waving from the couch. Frowning at Spike, she told him blandly, "Please don't sit next to me. Your situation makes me uncomfortable."

He lifted his eyebrows at her, looking more speculative than offended, then jumped up on the easy chair at the opposite end of the couch and sat down, taking on a bored expression.   


Buffy perched on the couch seat nearest to him and asked, "Willow and… Tara? It is Tara, right? Aren't here yet?"   


"I see your observational skills have made it back intact," Xander said, grinning a little too widely to cover his own discomfort. "They're picking up the pizza." His smile faded, and he flicked a nervous glance at Anya. "We didn't know if… Spike… eats pizza, so we just got you a double."   


"Okay." He was trying. She was glad.   


"Do you eat rabbits?" Anya asked Spike suddenly, leaning forwards. "Xander didn't know."

Spike frowned at the question, then gave her a hesitant nod.

Anya's eyes gleamed in triumph. "Do you run them down and tear their creepy little bodies apart? Crunch up their heads and crush their malevolent, conniving little brains with your teeth?"

Xander’s face went from slightly uncomfortable to a light shade of queasy, while Buffy turned to Spike with a kind of sick curiosity.   


Spike pursed his lips in thought, then nodded a casual agreement at Anya.

"I knew it," Anya said, pleased. "Xander, he can stay."   


"And on that reassuring note," Xander said loudly, "I think I might have heard the others." He hurried back to the door, opened it with what she suspected was more hope than belief, then startled slightly.   


Buffy was on her feet before Willow's voice outside deactivated her automatic lunge towards whatever was at the door. Trying to look less insanely attack-ready, she sat back down.   


Standing on his chair where he'd leapt up in turn, Spike gave her a confused look.

"It's usually demons," she muttered to him. "There is no scooby event which cannot be further complicated by demons. It's in the rulebook." Or perhaps she'd just been unconsciously hoping for one. After all, there was nothing quite like a quick and brutal fight for everyone's lives to break the ice and calm her jitters.  


Spike slowly sat back down.   


Willow came in, followed by a girl with a thick curtain of blonde hair obscuring most of her face and an armload of pizza boxes, which she handed over to Xander with a stuttered hello.   


"Right. Pizza," Xander proclaimed. "The saucery of collective harmony and untritional goodness."

  
  


He'd thought Buffy’s loud-mouthed pup of a friend sounded like a right berk with his  _ everything will be fine now the pizza's here, _ but… alright, the boy hadn't been entirely wrong. There was something in sharing a meal and the feelings of repletion which followed that tended to breed amiability and goodwill in any group, be they a nest of vampires, or a cave of trolls, or this motley collection of hybrid/transformed/ex demons and gay witches packed into a human teenager's shitty basement. It was temporary, sure, but for the evening… he had to admit that it felt rather okay to be just another outcast in her odd little pack of them.

Course, it'd be a different story once he had his faculties back and the obvious ability to turn one or more of them  _ into _ the meal. They might accept an  _ ex- _ demon, a human-with-superpowers, a few handy spellcasters, but there were limits to what even their unique little tribe would approve. As evidenced by the secretive little touches of fingers going on between Willow and her new ' friend'  when they thought no one was looking. Every culture needed its prohibitions to bring people together in fellowship, and though he didn't yet know what arbitrary and unusual ones this group had settled on, it wasn't hard to guess that vampires would be squarely on the forbidden list. His disguise of wolfism lured them into a temporary exception, but that was all. So he watched them cooly, remotely, and tried to remember how it had gone to see them only as meals. It had all got rather confusing now that the empty pizza boxes smelt more appetising.   


Xander did not like Angel; that much was clear as soon as his name came up in conversation. Oh, he was trying to keep a lid on it for Buffy’s sake, but he was clearly more than relieved to not have the brooding oaf sitting here in Spike’s place. Least he had that much sense. Little miss vengeance sitting beside him had a whole lot more. She was blunt past the point of rudeness, and although Xander (okay, retract his earlier granting of intelligence, the boy was an idiot) seemed to take each tactless statement as a personal failing of his own, no one else batted an eye. It was refreshing to have someone throw out their uncensored opinion without either the slightest concern for anyone's feelings, nor, so far as he could tell, any designs of her own, so he only grinned wryly when she turned her thoughts his way. Yes, it did suck to have no hands. No, he had not  _ procreated _ with any dogs, and had absolutely no wish to find out what kind of puppies he might spawn.

Willow was too busy with her own underhandedness to openly question him as she looked like she might have wanted to; as long as Buffy was talking and holding the room's attention away from Tara, she was content to leave it there. He was, however, receiving surreptitious and admiring looks from both of them, which was soothing to the ego in all sorts of ways. Damn straight he was an impressive looking wolf. Buffy’s mirror said so.   


"We saw a unicorn," she told them, with an air of having saved the best for last. "A real, live unicorn." Her voice had gone all hushed and reverent, the worshipful whisper of a girl who had believed in the existence of things good and pure and beautiful against all odds, and seen that belief validated by a horse with a horn sticking out of its forehead. Yeah, it had been a breathtaking thing to behold, but, fuck, she deserved so much more from life.   


"I felt like I could have caught it," she said, glancing at him for an opinion. "Like it was waiting for me to call it, or sing to it or something. Like it had been waiting for me." She flushed slightly, looking down.   


He nodded. Of course it had. How could it not have looked upon her and desired the touch of her hands, beyond its liberty, beyond fear?   


"I wish you'd brought it with you," Willow murmured.   


"Something tells me this isn't really the town for a unicorn to be happy in," she said dryly.   


"Alright, miss practicality," Willow grumbled lightly. "But at least take a camera with you next time. Then we could scrapbook your slayery adventures and mystical creature sightings." There was an undertone there, the barest hint of resentment, and he turned to study the girl again.   


_ It wasn't a bloody holiday on the continent. _ But Buffy had warned him, and the warning was unnecessary anyway. He did not, after all, go around bragging about his own miserable attempt at wooing someone wholly unsuitable. Shining moonlit unicorns were a treasure to share. Hacking the heart from a hellborn one in a slurry of blood and mud was a triumph these people would never understand, and it soothed him to have that glorious image remain all his own.   


He was still lost in his ponderings on it when a shuffle went through the room; right, they were getting ready to leave. Willow and Tara had classes tomorrow, Xander had a job to get up for. Buffy had a job to get out and do now that night was well upon them, and classes tomorrow, and homework, and was currently insisting on walking the witches back to campus. Cancel his daft idea to get her a puppy; it would only be another responsibility to add to that list.   


Xander hugged Buffy and Willow goodbye in a clear show of possession - though, to be charitable to pizza boy, it was flavoured with a base note of almost brotherly concern - and gave him a cautious nod that denoted neither approval nor disapproval, but perhaps his thanks for not doing anything outlandish.   


Anya's goodbye was obviously scripted, and yet warm enough, and it crossed his mind briefly to ham it up by offering her a paw to shake while ignoring Xander entirely. But wasn't even sure what it was that irked him so about the boy, so he held to his decision to stay removed, nodding back at her cooly.

Then they were outside and walking, fresh air expansive and the all-but-full moon hanging innocuous and unwatchful overhead. He scouted out ahead as they shortcut through yet another of Sunnydale's innumerable cemeteries, nose skimming through the secrets on the breeze for any hint of undead or soldiery foe, finding nothing but an excuse to stretch his legs. Twice he looked up to find Tara watching him, and the second time managed to give her a wag of his tail before she dropped her face away shyly. Hard not to feel a certain kinship with the other silent member on the outer edge of the group.   


From the campus lawn, Buffy watched until they were safely inside the building, then turned to him. "Shall we go find something to chase now?" she asked, amusement in her eyes.   


Bugger it. He made a yipping sound of enthusiastic assent, because she'd been right, of course, he was  _ frisky _ tonight, body humming on a surge of energy from good food and a warm bed and little exercise, and he might have been useless against one ton of demon-rhino, but she was about to learn just how not-useless he was in a fairer fight.


	20. Recall

Spike was lethal, and terrifying. Yes, she'd known he could run fast, and bite hard, and follow scents, and that the Big Bad Wolf was, well, the big bad of the story, but knowing on some background level was somewhat different from seeing him in action. Or not seeing him, as the case was.   


His ears had alerted them first, pricking up at a sound below her range from somewhere off in the confusing wooded patch up the back of Restfield Cemetery. She'd followed his slinking prowl into the trees, listening hard, then he'd taken off in a thunder of padded feet and left her swearing to herself silently as she ran after the sound of snapping sticks and stomping feet. There was a series of thumps and crashes, a harsh screech, a low, muffled snarl, then he was trotting back towards her proudly, his panting muzzle shining wet and dark in the low light. Lethal.

She stopped, forgotten awarenesses trickling back to the surface. He was not a house pet, however many cups of tea he drank and slices of pizza he ate. Or not only. He was a predator, equipped and fine-tuned for the violent destruction of living flesh. The blood painting his muzzle was only the latest decoration in a lifetime- unlifetime of it. He had killed two of her predecessors. He could kill her.   


A wordless, irrational surge of heat growled forth in her chest, itching like pins and needles down to hands that burned to hit at him, to pin him down and sink their claws into him, to make him bare his throat to her in helpless surrender. And that was the part that was terrifying.   


He had stopped, several yards clear, looking first crestfallen, then tempestuous, mouth closing from its happy panting to that tight, ready look. His eyes flashed with whatever he wanted to spit out at her, accusing and hurt.

She could not hit a wolf. She could not hit him at all, just for being what he'd always been. She counted three of her breaths, in, out, then told him quietly, "I don't think this is natural. You and me."   


His glare hardened, head held stiffly in a blanket disagreement with her words.

"This… truce," she clarified, because he was right; this, whatever this was, this livewire humming ravenously in her veins, was everything she'd never known was natural, only it felt all tangled and distorted by the denial of the right form for its expression. "You, like this. A vampire, and not."   


He considered her for a long moment, glare slowly fading, then licked his lips and ducked his head in a subdued nod.   


The feeling burning through her stuttered and died, like the floor had fallen out from beneath it. She dropped her own gaze to the ground and shook out her tingling hands. "So, umm, what'd you catch?" she asked in a nervous titter.

He took a couple of steps back, shook his coat hard, and then turned to lead her back to it.   


She didn't know what it was; the fact that its head lay a few feet away from the rest of it was half an excuse. It was greyish, and dimpled, and, actually, kinda like a small-human-sized thanksgiving turkey. A raw one.  _ Yick. _ "Do you know what it's called?" she asked Spike, wrinkling up her nose. "Because I really don't want to turn it over for a closer look, but Giles will be curious."   


Spike nodded, still somewhat subdued.   


"Okay. Good." She sighed. "Really, Spike. You did good, whatever the hell that thing is. Sorry for the freakout. I just… can we stick together next time?"   


His head came up, optimism returning, and she winced to herself a little at the realisation that he'd been uncertain whether or not there would be a next time. She held a hand out towards him in invitation, hating how weird and awkward she'd made everything suddenly, all uncertain again about just touching him but desperate to reconnect somehow.   


A butt of his head bunted her hand out of the way for him to press his head and neck against her thigh instead, all wriggly and nudgy as he encouraged her to pet him.

Okay. They were okay. Obviously a little at odds in their weird interspecies muddle when it came to the heightened emotions of hunting (or, alright,  _ she _ was), but he was being gracious about it. They'd work it out. 

  
  


The first vampire they came across gave them little warning, popping up and out of one of the sewer manholes like some kind of fangy whack-a-mole. She went at it with a burst of vindication, landing punches and kicks with the sort of solid, effective smacks of knuckles and boots on flesh that she'd missed more than she realised. When it went down and stayed there she palmed a stake that felt like part of her hand and sank it in and out with a fluid ease that was oh so gratifying. Straightening up and brushing dust off her palms, she looked over at Spike and bit her lip on her grin.

He sat on his haunches with his easy smile fully returned at last and humour in his eyes. When she met his gaze he thumped his tail a few times in what could have been canine applause.   


"Thanks," she said, relaxing. "You can share the next one.  _ If _ you're quick enough."

He did that silent laughing thing and swaggered over to her, ears scanning about eagerly.

  
  


They slunk into the house near midnight again, Buffy motioning him silently into the bathroom and through getting his face scrubbed clean of blood before shooing him out for her turn.   


Waiting in her bedroom, he considered the notepad and pen on her bedside table, sifting through his thoughts for any way of arranging them into words. There wasn't one. No explaining the upside down and inside out flash of betrayal he'd felt at finding her  _ finally _ looking at him as the bleeding big bad vampire he was. No way to tell her she'd been right; this wasn't natural -  _ he _ wasn't natural - and that some hunger long suppressed and forgotten had struggled awake inside of him in answer to her unconscious demand. It had all left him ill at ease in a niggling, background way, remembering on an other than intellectual level that this was not his true skin.

But his lack of inscribable words didn't matter. She had sensed the wrongness in him and vocalised it for them. Then adapted, stepped around the disconnect and moved on. Found a proxy for what her confused instincts sought fruitlessly in him and vented herself on it. And if she had looked at him for one breath and seen something she should not trust, she had also chosen to do just that by leading him back here for the night.   


She tiptoed into the darkened room and closed the door with a soft click, then climbed into bed, last night’s nervous wall facing forgotten.   


He stood on the floor beside the bed, the nagging out-of-place sensation inside him restless and uncomfortable.   


"Are you getting on?" she whispered. "Or do you need something?"   


He shook his head and climbed up on the bed, lying down on what seemed to be his side, wary of spreading his unease.

After a minute of what felt like tongue-bitten silence, she whispered, "Are you okay?"

He nodded, then surrendered to the urge to wriggle closer, needy for the aura of protection she exuded.

Her arm came out to pat him as soon as his back pressed up against her, rubbing long, firm strokes over his ribs that felt soothing and full of safety. And easy. Natural. As had hunting together, once they'd tiptoed out a cooperation again. He'd been very wrong, he knew, in poaching the heshlarn demon like that. Would have known then, had he not been too brimming with nervous energy and excitement, and now the fact that he'd allow that to overrule his more-than-canine sense had him questioning just how close to the truth the watcher-witch's warning had been. How many seemingly insignificant little details of wolfish behaviour had snuck up on him to alter his urges and reactions.  _ But not this.  _ Here in her arms, he knew himself. He was the creature who watched the door while she slept, bodiless in the dark, made solid where her supple form pressed against him. He loved her. It was never enough, loving someone, but it was enough to remember himself by. 

  
  


That night he dreamt of stalking her while she picked flowers in a meadow, the pads of his paws soft and cool on rich earth. He pounced while she sat woving them into a bundle, sprawling her on her back beneath him, and held her there with human hands. She grabbed him by the ruff and shook him until he felt his long-lost vampire fangs burst forth in his now hairless, human body, and he ached to sink them into her, but couldn't remember how.   


"Just be yourself," she said, angry with him, and bucked her hips against his… he wasn't sure, it was all vague down there.

He bent his head to her throat and licked the skin there with a tiny, probing tongue, and she moaned beneath him, resistance melting into invitation. Her hands trailed down his sides to outline his hips, thighs, and they became real under her fingers, between her thighs, this strange, changing body answering hers without need of direction, lost hunger swelling forth in him at the promise of its appeasement.   


He awoke with his heart pounding, hammering at him rudely in a renewed confusion of aliveness. Twisting around carefully until he could see her face, he studied the sleeping softness of her mouth, the tender pink skin of her lips, and wondered what it was like to kiss her. How the curve of her cheek would feel under fingertips; the taste of the curve of her earlobe. Desire tugged oddly through his body, and he rested his muzzle down on the blankets with a wistful sigh. It was a dirty fucking catch 22, because he'd never be lying here if he had hands. 

  
  


"You didn't tell me how cute he is!" Willow exclaimed. "With those pointy little ears, and the big fluffy tail, and ooh I just wanted to squish him!" Her eyes widened. "Only I wouldn't, because vampire."

Buffy smiled down at the litter of books she was sorting on her bed, irrationally pleased by Willow’s verdict. "I know. You should see him when he gets all excited; he does this adorable little jumping thing that makes me hopelessly gooey." Crap, that was hopelessly gooey to admit to. "Don't tell him I said that," she added quickly.   


"Got it," Willow said with a grin, before it slowly became more serious. "And you'll note that I did not surrender to any urge to baby talk him. Cute as he is, he seems very standoffish. Are you coping alright with the cohabiting?"

"He's not… standoffish," she said, turning to Willow with a frown. "It's been really hard for him. And you're all strangers, and he probably expected you to hate him for the whole ruined-parent-teacher-night, sent-assassins-after-us thing-" Which, okay, fair, and she really hadn't thought through her glib request for him to come along, had she? "He's…"  _ nice? Shy?  _ How on earth could she sum up  _ Spike?  _ "...different once you get to know him."

"Uh, white flag waving here," Willow said, with a quizzical frown.   


Buffy looked down, chagrined. "Oops." Sighing, she shoved a few books aside to sit down. "He sleeps on my bed," she admitted. "And he loves having his ears rubbed."

"Oh. That's, um…"

"A mess," Buffy finished for her in a groan. "What am I going to do on Friday? He's going to want to  _ eat people. _ "  _ And leave. He's supposed to leave.  _ "I don't know." Time to nope right out of this conversation. "Did Tara have an okay time? It must have been a bit more of an introduction than she expected. Unless you told her we're a sci-fi authors club or something?"   


Willow giggled nervously, probably still rocked by the whole 'the vampire-wolf is sleeping on my bed'.

_ Why the hell did I tell her that? _ She needed to talk this over with someone, but the someone was Spike, and that was out of the question while he couldn’t talk and didn’t know for certain how he would feel about being himself again. Jenny's words aside, actually experiencing his body again was bound to throw everything out the window.   


"No, I told her the truth," Willow was saying. "She grew up with magic. As soon as I told her where you'd been she was keen to hear the full story." She started checking through her perfectly organised bag, opening and closing each zip with darting fingers. "What did you think of her, anyway?"

Oh yeah. Secret identity breach. Unapproved newbie. "She seems nice enough. I mean, she hardly said anything, but if you think she's okay…"

"I do. Think she's okay," Willow said with a shy smile. That smile turning cheeky, she added, "She's different once you get to know her _. _ "

"Okay," Buffy said, shrugging. "I guess we'll get to know her then." What did she really know of Spike? _That he loves being touched. That he's distressed about this too._ That she _knew_ him, underneath his fangs. Throwing what she hoped was the right pile of books into her satchel, she picked it up and led Willow out of the room. 

  
  


"Willow and Jenny are kicking up the intel-finding tonight," she told Spike while buttering toast for their afternoon tea. "Hacking the non-ninja military base for whatever paperwork they have on our super secret supernatural division." She slid a plate across the island to him, bit into her own piece of toast, and then asked through her mouthful, "Is it still called paperwork when it's computerised?" Swallowing, she continued, "Anyway, I say we scout out the rest of that area, door to caves. There's got to be more entrances."   


He nodded, seconding the plan, and picked up another piece of his toast. She'd relaxed her worries on the food front since discovering that he could eat his recommended dinner and then several human ones on top. They were running out of peanut butter.   


"Until then," she pouted out her lip sulkily, "I've got reading to catch up on."   


He tilted an ear towards her in curious interest.

"Nothing demony," she told him. "Just this novel for Lit class."

He flicked his uppermost ear as if twitching off a fly, then returned it to its listening position.   


"I guess I could read it out loud, if you want? It's, um..." damn it, she was so behind this week, "A Tale of Two Cities. I mean, you've probably read it. Sometime. Being from one of the cities, not because it's old or anything…" She rubbed a hand over her face, drained suddenly by the fact that it was only Wednesday and therefore two whole days until the weekend, and by the fact that it was Wednesday and therefore only two days until she was expected to hand in a couple of pages about the first chapters of this book. Two short days until Friday night. Looking back up at him, she found him waiting with his ear still cocked and that familiar soft smile sneaking out onto his face. "Do you want to listen to it?" she asked quietly.   


He nodded, impossibly sweet eyes gentle on hers.   


"Okay," she said, smiling back. 

  
  


She curled up against the headboard of her bed, and he tucked himself in his own loose curl against her legs. He seemed to love having his back pressed into her, his legs tucked up close to himself, as though he was squeezing himself into a narrow circle of shelter cast by her body. The clear need for comfort and security made her heart ache for him, for all the lonely fairy nights he must have endured, for the uncertainty in his future. And the feel of his solid body pressed against her made that same heart swell, brimming over with something tender and compassionate that urged her to wrap her arms around him and hold him safe here with her.   


She reached down and ruffled the fur between his ears affectionately, then picked up the book. "At least it's not a fairy-tale, huh?  _ 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... _ '"   


He closed his eyes, ears still standing up to listen attentively.   


" _ ’ _ ... _ in short, so like the present period.'"  _ Flicking back to the copyright page, she checked the date there and then asked him, "Was it?"   


He snorted a soft huff, opening his eyes, then his gaze turned inwards in thought. Focusing on her face again, he tilted his head and smiled lopsidedly in a half-agreeing fashion.   


"I suppose they all are," she mused. "The moments of time we each inhabit, to fill with our private bests and worsts." He was too easy to talk to sometimes, comfortable silence encouraging her thoughts to wander off down strange paths and take her tongue with them. "Anyway.  _ 'There were a king…'" _

Spike’s ears had long since relaxed into sleep when she reached the end of the first part of the book, and though she was tempted to tease him awake for it, she was all yawny and fuzzy too and had only really been continuing to read aloud to prevent herself accidentally nodding off. Besides, he was all warm and comfortable on her toes.

The cessation of her voice awoke him anyway, ears startling as he blinked himself awake and tried to look like he hadn't just been sound asleep.   


Smiling at his look of rueful contrition, she reached down to rub his ears again. "I was letting sleeping wolves lie." She waved the book. "Caught up. Now I just have to write something about it before Friday. Unless you want to chew it up for me so I can ask for an extension on the grounds that a wolf of a dog truly did eat my homework?"   


He huffed a laugh and stretched over onto his back for her to rub his chest.   


"Alright," she fake-grumbled, scratching him, "I'll do it tomorrow." She should be getting up. Her bedroom walls were orange-tinged with the last of the day's sunlight, and she wanted to get their super-secret-soldier-base explorations done before patrol, and perhaps make it back here to bed  _ before _ tomorrow, given the lazy lethargy of her limbs right now.  _ Soon. Comfortable now _ .

Spike rolled back over, twisting all his fur around adorably, then squirmed up beside her and nodded at the bedside table.   


"You want the pen?" she asked, surprised.   


He lifted his eyebrows in a nod, so she passed it to him and held the notepad stiff for him to write on. After a minute he dropped the pen down and tilted his head at her curiously.

_ How did you know my name ? _

"Ahh," she said, grinning smugly. "The great secret of  _ William Pratt. _ "   


He poked her in the ribs with his muzzle in a gentle scold.   


"There's a thesis about you," she told him. "Did you know? Watchers Academy publication, about six years ago."

He gave her a sceptical, puzzled look.

"Ya-huh. I read it as part of the whole Whirlwind research-athon after the mirror birthday fiasco." She shrugged. "I suspect it's mostly fiction, but there's a section of speculation on your origins… You first came to the council's attention in 1880, after a  _ spate of vicious murders _ in central London; moneyed types with silly moustaches and important connections. Railroad spikes, heads,  _ yech _ ."  _ Move on, fast. _ "The author notes previous speculation that you may have been turned much earlier and simply kept your head down until this point, but…" She gave him a knowing look. As if  _ Spike  _ could ever keep from garnering attention. "...proceeds to examine the possibilities around this date anyway. Hell, I sound like I've been spending too much time with Giles. Or in Dickens," she laughed. "There was a guy called Will Butcher, who worked for one of the railroad spike through the head -dudes. He vanished not long before it all went down, people said he was a crook, candlesticks were missing, yada yada. And," she watched him closely, "there was one William Pratt, member of the same classy set, vanished the same month, but never turned up dead and spikey. Unless he did."   


He looked a little tense, cagey, and she hankered to ask for more details nearly as badly as she was sure she really did  _ not _ want to know.   


"Butcher alliterates into Bloody nicely, but why would you? And why go to such pains to write it on the wall of that dude's house in his blood - which, seriously, eww - when he wasn't even the guy that fired him? Then Giles told me what 'prat' means, and I figured that was probably a strong driver to want to be known by almost anything else. Supplementary evidence; Mr Butcher was supposed to be a lazy, moaning sort, and William Pratt, in a true sign of devilish nonconformism, was a lefty." She tilted her head at the paw he always used to turn door handles and reach for things. "Some things don't change."  _ And some things do. _ William Pratt had left nothing to history beyond the details listed by his creditors in the search for him. William the Bloody had carved his coming-out party into the watchers annals with enough presence to ensure he was never forgotten.   


Spike looked down at his hand-paw, his face as closed as he could manage with the ears and things. Ears that had dropped back at their bases slightly, in the way that meant a sort of thoughtful discomfort. Yeah. She concurred.   


His head turned to the window, ears lifting to listen, and a minute later the front door opened and closed downstairs. Mom was back. It was time to help with dinner.   


She gave the side of his head a quick pat, then put down the notepad and got up. 


	21. By the full moon's light

There was something in the soldiers' scent, hanging about the two further secret doors he'd sniffed out; several somethings of note, in fact, but one element that was most urgently pertinent. He moved his nose slowly over the large rock standing beside this second door again, letting the molecules waft through it from where someone had leaned here last weekend. This was another bit of wolfdom he was definitely going to miss. His vampiric senses were great, of course - several times beyond human range in the scenting department - but what he had now took things to a whole new level.   


No need to compare these markers back to the source of them for confirmation; they were familiar enough from three afternoons spent in very close proximity to someone else carrying them. He turned to her, ready to whisper what he'd just put together, then shook his head at himself wryly and gestured back down the path.   


She followed him in light-footed silence until they came out at the edge of the trees, campus buildings shining ahead. Bleeding obvious why they were so close now.   


"Do you need to tell me now, or shall we go to my dorm room? It's not far, and I was just thinking that we could sneak you in the window."

Smarter to go the opposite way. But only in the short-term. He jerked his head towards campus.   


She led him to Stevenson Hall on a circuitous route that kept them close to hedges and gardens, all the better to hide him in if any late-night wanderers of the human kind happened to appear. Finding her window, she squeezed behind its own shrubby hedge-garden and tapped on it. "Willow?" she hissed. "It's me, let us in."

Voices whispered to each other inside; Willow and Tara, sounded like, then the window opened. "Buffy?"

"Yep. Look out, I'm going to throw Spike in."

_ No, you're not.  _ The window ledge only came up to her shoulders; he gathered himself and leapt up onto it, landing with the sort of tidy grace he lately felt incapable of pulling off cleanly in her presence.   


"I meant I would give you a boost," she muttered, jumping up after him. "Show off."

He leapt down into the room and padded over to stand by her bed while she climbed in and closed the window.   


"Thanks," she said to Willow. "And, um, hi."   


Tara smiled a shy hello, ducking her head, then told Willow, "I-I'd better go. It's a school night, and you probably need to- to catch up and stuff."   


"You don't have to!" Willow tried.   


"N-no, I've got that assignment to finish," she said, all anxious placation. "I'll see you tomorrow." She looked up at him and Buffy and said quietly, "It was n-nice to see you again."

There was genuine warmth behind the nerves, and he swept his tail in a gentle wag in response. The girl tugged on his canine instincts, all sweet and unthreatening as she was; they were telling him to show clear placidity in response, and he found he could see no harm in agreeing with them.   


"You scared her away," Willow pouted once she'd gone.

"Commiserate with Kendra," Buffy sighed regretfully. "Sorry." She dug around in a jar of pens on her desk, coming up with a felt and pad of paper, then looked around the room before crossing to the fridge and magnetting a few sheets onto it. Turning to him with apology still on her face, she lifted her eyebrows in question.   


He nodded and took the pen.   


"Spike picked something up while we were looking for more mystery doors," she told Willow. "And there's two more within half a mile out there."

"We didn't find anything earlier," Willow said. "Well, we pulled a lot of stuff to go through over the next few days, but none of it screamed 'Secret Demon Project' on the file folders."   


Buffy had her back to him, giving him privacy to write. He didn't care right now what Willow might think - bugger it, would make a show of it for her - but the little touch of automatic consideration from Buffy made him feel like turning back to the fridge to write out what he felt about her in big screaming letters. No. Stick to task. He wuffed at her to turn around and read.

_ "Soldiers go  _ _ here _ _." _

"Here… like, to this building?" she asked, frowning.   


He shook his head once and turned back to the fridge, moving his body over to invite her to read as he wrote. _"_ _ Your class."  
_

"They go in… they're  _ in _ my class?" she asked, hovering between disbelief and confusion. "Why?"

He frowned back, shrugged a shoulder.  _ How the hell would I know?   
_

"Can't  _ anything  _ I sign up for just be normal?" she whined, flopping down to sit on her bed. " _ Bastards. _ "

"It makes sense," Willow said speculatively. "They'd be mostly young adults, wouldn't they? Like us."

He nodded, catching Willow's eye.  _ Yes, they are. _   


"And they'd need cover identities, for their secret ones to stay secretey," Willow continued. "So why not make them students, and build their base nice and close to campus. They could come and go whenever they want without being noticed."

"They have secret identities now?" Buffy asked. "That’s stepping on my thing!"

"Is this pre-birthday tension?" Willow asked her, concerned. "Because we were talking about that, and we've decided you need cake.  _ Not _ birthday cake. Pre-birthday cake. Unbirthday cake. A sort of preemptive measure to forestall any birthday-week slumps with a copious amount of chocolate. Jenny's going to make it."

"Oh," Buffy said, perking up a smidgen in interest. " _ Not _ birthday cake?" She turned to him and whispered conspiratorially,  _ "Buffy birthdays are cursed." _

He gave her a look meant to convey, _ I remember, and still beg to differ. _

"Anti-birthday cake," Willow coaxed. "Chocolate. And cream. And more chocolate. This Sunday, at Giles's."

"I guess maybe…" Her gaze travelled back to him, and promptly fell. "I don't know. I'll have to see." She stood up and crossed her arms, staring at the words on the fridge again. "So, soldier-dudes are doing their incognito thing, going to classes with us by day, hunting demons by night, probably for some kind of plan to use them as weapons or recruits."   


"Weapons?" Willow echoed.   


"I've forgotten to pass that on, haven't I?" She pursed her lips at the floor for a moment, silently admonishing herself, then sat down on the bed facing Willow again. "They - the government, army, whatever - had this plan during the war."

He jumped up on her bed and lay down beside her on his elbows, not quite touching her, because Willow was here and something warned him back from displaying too much familiarity in front of her, but close, because fuck, Buffy needed telling that she was doing a damn good job and ought to ease up on herself, and while he could hardly write that on the fridge right now, he could do his best to show her that he thought it.

"Second world war. Spike told me yesterday. He had a run-in with the German army, who were catching vampires and trying to use them as weapons, and America obviously had the same thought, because they enlisted Angel at stakepoint and…" she looked over at him, probably still wondering if she'd really read it right, "made him retrieve a submarine?"

He nodded casually.   


"So they knew enough to hunt Angel out. Give the same secret division fifty-plus years to plot away in their bunker and I guess this could be an evolution of the same basic idea."

"Wow," Willow murmured. "That’s, like, one of those crazy conspiracies. Only real."   


"Or it's just some hellmouth weirdos building an underground zoo," Buffy said, shrugging. The tone was light enough, but her hand had settled on the top of his shoulders, fingers winding anxiously through the fur there.

"Wouldn't the demons just attack whatever's closest to them?" Willow asked. "It doesn't sound very… practical."

"They were trying to use mind control on them. Or the Nazis were, anyway. And the American’s seized some of their stuff."

"Did it work?"   


Quite the curious little scientist, this one. He pulled his lips back from his teeth in a show of fangs and ran his tongue across them.

"About that well," Buffy said, an illicit little smirk in her voice.   


Willow looked shocked, but not exactly displeased. "You  _ ate _ Nazis?" she asked.   


He nodded.   


"I shouldn't be condoning murder," Willow said, forcing her lips together on a fervid smile and letting the  _ but I am in this instance  _ hang silently.   


Christ these people were confusing.

"Anyway," Buffy said, "we know they're catching demons alive. We need to know what for. And if they're doing some kind of mind control thing on them…" her gaze slid to him and back, fingers tightening in his fur. "Then we stop them."

Willow nodded firmly and picked up her laptop. "Maybe we can narrow down a profile. Spike, did you mean the  _ exact _ same classrooms Buffy’s been in, or just classrooms here in general? Do they smell that specific?"

Buffy did the two option / two hands thing she'd copied from Joyce, and he jerked his nose at each hand.   


"Some of the same classes, some other ones?"   


He nodded.   


Willow lifted her eyebrows. "That’s really neat! Oz used to smell things- I mean, he still does, but- I don't think he's that good. When he's not a wolf. Which you are." She closed her mouth, and Buffy gave her a sympathetic little smile.   


Right. Her wolfboy had buggered off. Probably for the best, too; he couldn’t imagine the tosser would have engendered the same benevolent feeling in him that Tara did. Especially if he didn’t know how to treat his bird right.

Willow looked down at her laptop screen. "Okay, so if we go through the rolls for the classes you might share, maybe someone will match our profile… what is our profile? Shifty-looking army-types?"   


Buffy leaned over and grabbed the pen and rest of the pad of paper, holding them on the bed for him.

He took the pen and wrote, _"_ _ Male." _

"All of them?" she asked, askance.   


Nod.

"Those sexist chauvinists!" Willow said, frowning. "It's probably one of those desperately masculine neanderthal fraternities-" Her eyes bugged out, and she looked at Buffy, "Not that pre-civilisation cultures couldn't have strong female leaders…"

Buffy snickered. "I think possessing beer made mine a civilisation. Isn't that what Mr Dunwin used to say?"

Oh there was a story here. He turned to her with one ear lifted curiously.   


"Later," she whispered, rubbing a hand over her face in mild embarrassment. "Okay, so, boys in my classes. At least that halves the pool of possibilities. What else?"

_ "Big. Ish."  _ That one was harder to pin down; everyone was too damn tall right now. But they were much bigger than her, anyway. _"_ _ Taller than Xander, maybe." _   


Buffy nodded, thinking.   


"Where's your timetable?" Willow asked. "I know you've had Psych and Lit this week; what else did you show up to?"   


"Everything," Buffy told her, frowning in rebuke. "Poetry - but I don't think poetry and demons really mesh."

Thank fuck that whoever had him recorded as left-handed hadn't included the true sin of having fancied himself a poet, because he was never digging that one up. He sneered his agreement with her words.   


"Start with Psych? Given the whole mind control thing. Maybe it's background training for them." She groaned. "Half the college has probably been through that classroom in the past three days."   


"Not half," Willow said, shaking her head and tapping keys. "I'll find out…" She looked up again. "What are we going to do if we  _ do  _ find out? We can't just pull Garth and… David aside after class and ask them. 'Good lesson wasn't it? Now, by the way, are you part of a secret military organisation capturing demons?'"

"Why Garth and David?" Buffy asked, her tone mildly curious.   


"David's got that whole 'big slabs of muscle' thing," Willow said idly. "Garth once told me he was into cryptozoology."   


Buffy nodded. "I don't know. We'll work it out when we know," she said flippantly.   


He picked up the pen again. _"_ _ Slayer. Witch. Useful recruits." _ Buffy read it out, and he gave each of them a cautioning look.

"We'll be careful," she told him lightly.   


He gave her a look that said,  _ You'd bloody better _ .

"We'd better get going," she told Willow apologetically, climbing to her feet and stretching. "If I sit here any longer I'll have to lie down, and I've still got a patrol to do."   


Willow nodded, eyes on her screen. "I'll see you in the morning?"   


"Yep. We can place bets on which of our classmates are underground demon hunters," she muttered ruefully.   


Buffy pushed open the window and glanced at the drop, then swung out of it and jumped down. He nodded at Willow, got a vague one over her screen in return, and followed Buffy out through the window.   


"Wil?" Buffy called back through it. "Close the window."

"What? Oh." Putting the laptop down, she stood up and did so.

Buffy waited until the latch clicked before giving her a wave and picking her way out of the hedge. "Patrol?" she asked him, a smile sneaking out.   


He wagged his tail and nodded. Yes. Most definitely yes. It felt like they'd hardly scratched the surface of what they could do together last night. After their initial discordance they'd taken down a few more opponents, with slowly increasing levels of cooperation. His skillset now lay best in finding things to fight and herding them towards her; she delivered punches and killing blows with a graceful precision that was poetry to watch. And once they'd each stopped trying to individually do everything themselves and played to their best strengths, he'd found himself enjoying the skirmishes in a whole new way.   


The eager gleam in her eyes right now suggested she felt the same. 

  
  


So much for being home before midnight; patrolling with Spike was too much fun. It was like turning everything up to eleven, or, like, ten thousand.   


He ran in that smooth, loping run that swallowed up Sunnydale's tiny distances effortlessly, nose constantly questing forward, and she followed him at her own steady jog, enjoying the stretch and pull of properly warm muscles and being able to narrow her attention down with his superior senses on listen-out.   


When they found vampires, it was almost embarrassingly unfair. There'd be a moment's standoff as the vampire belatedly realised the slayer was standing right in front of it, then it would invariably (and stupidly) decide this made for a lucky night and come at her. Teeth and fists flashed in the dark, then she would dive in to finish it while he stepped back to watch. It was  _ good.   
_

If he had any qualms about what was on some level hunting his own kind, he made no sign of it. His breath panted hot and eager from a grinning mouth, lusting in the fight as much as she did. She had forgotten, in two long years, just how much he enjoyed the battle itself.   


_ Would you do this as a vampire? Could it ever satisfy you?  _ She couldn't ask; feared the answer, feared the possible destruction of planting faith in any one he gave now. So she ran with him under the fullest night of the moon, and let the night carry her away.

Afterwards she brushed him on the back porch, clearing sticks and leaves from his coat, and watched it glow bright in the clear moonlight, beautiful and, tonight, hers. " _ Sometimes I think we're still in a fairy-tale," _ she whispered to him.  _ "But I don't know what sort of tale it is. _ "

He smiled sadly and rubbed his head into her shoulder. He couldn't know either. 

  
  


Buffy slept, boneless and warm against him, while he lay awake, thinking quiet thoughts in the space the dark made. She was never going to take down the US Military by Friday. She was brilliant, but she couldn’t do that. If taking it down  _ was _ her plan. Catching demons was her job, after all; could be she could ally herself with the wankers, send  _ them _ out to stop the next apocalypse if they thought they were all that.  _ No, you know she wouldn't.  _ The concept of palming off responsibility didn't seem to exist to her. She would run ahead of them into battle, or she would tell them to go home and let her handle it. And though he knew not where her divisions lay, what with werewolves and unwillingly-ex demons and her attitude towards Dru, he could not picture her ignoring the enslavement of even her enemies. He snorted, smirked to himself in the dark. Even the ones that were a gigantic pain in her arse. So, secret government project was going down. And it would take longer than the next forty-odd hours.

_ Let me help you.  _ She had to see the sense in it, surely. Had to see even an evil vampire would be on the same side in this. Had to see he wasn't… could choose to… Fuck, he didn't bloody know. What he was, or could be, or would.  _ But I know I can help you. Know I love you.   
_

_ Someone tell me how this story ends. _   


He couldn’t shake The Little Mermaid from his mind tonight, that poor bitch who traded her voice for legs and the chance to earn a part of her lover's soul. And then watched him marry someone else, and got lumped with the job of three hundred years hard labour earning her own bloody human soul just to keep existing, all because she couldn’t kill him. Meanwhile the damn wolfen thing got ascribed to him without any damn desire on his part, and he had  _ no _ aspirations of obtaining a real live human one and turning into the Sir Broodypants, Mark II.  _ I'm not your sodding replacement,  _ he snarked into the dark, and a chaffing whisper of a growl came from his throat in lieu of the words.   


He froze, instantly contrite at the notion of having disturbed her, but she slumbered on. The flash of defiant anger fading as quickly as it had arisen, he stretched his muzzle out on the blankets beside her with a sigh.  _ I don't know what sort of tale this is. But I know it's ours. _   


_ There's a beautiful princess who deserves a happy ending, and a beast who knows nothing beyond her.   
_

He should get some sleep. Joyce was off work tomorrow, and she was going to make cookies. He ought to supervise, in case the flour was possessed or the utensils needed licking. He had the tongue for it.   


Shuffling up a little closer against Buffy, he closed his eyes and did so.


	22. Thursday

Buffy opened her eyes, and it was Thursday. Also, she was probably running late again. Mumbling a string of complaints under her breath, she got up and raced through a shower.

"I can give you a ride?" Joyce offered when she came downstairs.   


"Oh." It whipped the reason out from under her mood without taking the feeling with it. "Okay, thanks," she made herself say. "That'd be great."

Joyce shrugged. "I've been thinking about heading down to LA for an exhibition this weekend. It's a collaborative between several of the academies.  _ Sculpture and Reimagined Items _ ."

"Um." It was an offer to go along, or maybe for Joyce to stay home, not an idle statement. But whatever happened tomorrow, she doubted she'd want to follow it with hours trapped in the car with her mother. "No, yeah, you should go. Gotta keep those imagines fresh."  _ Unlike me. _ "I've got a heap of work to catch up on this weekend anyway."

"Okay. Well, if you're sure, then I'll head down tomorrow. Chrissy's offered me her guest suite."   


She smiled, catching up. "How is Chrissy?" She'd been a long term friend of Mom’s - and Dad's - back in LA, always the loudest voice at dinner parties. But Buffy hadn’t heard her name for… a long time.   


"Divorced," Joyce said easily. "Again."

"Huh." What was that, number three? Yawning, she reached into the pantry for cereal and a bowl. "Don't have too much fun."

"Oh, we will," Joyce said cheekily. 

  
  


Willow was waiting for her with the smuggyest of smug smiles.

"Show and tell?" Buffy prompted her.

"It's Lowell House," she said proudly.   


"The fraternity?"

"Yep." She opened her laptop and spun it around.

Buffy sat down on the end of Willow's bed to read the screen; it was showing a list of names with colour-coded entries under them.   


"Most - ninety per cent - of their residents are from out of state," Willow said, pointing to the green highlighted text lines. "Ohio, Missouri, Illinois…" She waved at the purple bits on the screen. "More than half of them are on record as having joined the military over there. Six of them transferred here together partway through the last school year, and they were all given special dispensations to transfer their credits smoothly.  _ Classified _ ones."

"Riley Finn…" Buffy read out. "He's Professor Walsh's TA."

"Yep. Five of them share classes with you, either as students or TA's. But it gets better," Willow said eagerly. "Professor Walsh, and…" she checked the screen, "Dr Angleman, science department, moved here the same month. Both from Ohio."

Buffy toyed with her lip, staring at the screen. " _ All _ of Lowell House?" she asked in a whinge.

"Sorry," Willow said, pulling a quick sympathetic frown. "You know, we really should dig into the rest of the frats. Statistics thus far says there's probably more of them with secret no-good demon connections."

"I'll get right on it," Buffy said wryly.   


Willow grinned. "After this one will be acceptable."

"Did you work all of this out last night?"   


"Yep. It wasn't hard; it's all on the college database. And the ones from their previous schools."

"Have I told you lately that you're brilliant?" she asked, smiling. "Because you really are."

Willow beamed back at her, sarcastic but proud.   


She'd missed this lately; bubbly, lightning-quick Willow who took an intangible problem and jabbed pencils at it until it could be presented on a pretty chart with all of its facts in proper order and ready for punching. Maybe she should give  _ Willow _ the problem of her and Spike, then wait to read the tidy, colour-coded conclusion she came up with. Except her and Spike could never be boiled down to tangible facts, no matter how good Willow was.

Willow snapped her laptop shut and started packing it up. "So, ready for a psychology lesson from the undercover demon military duo?"   


"Mmm. Remember the monkey thing?" Buffy asked, unease prickling through her.   


They'd watched it last month. Tiny baby monkeys cowering in bare wire cages, their terrified eyes staring back at the camera while they hugged themselves tight in a desperate search for comfort that was never coming. Willow had cried silent tears; Walsh had pointed her out to state that if she couldn’t control her emotions over some _laboratory_ _ specimens _ then this wasn't the class for her. Buffy had wanted to break something. The wire cages and then the narrating scientist's face, for starters.

"Yes," Willow said quietly, all lightness gone. "She was inhuman. Inhumane."

"Yeah." She shouldered her bag and walked to class with Willow, pondering the words.   


While Professor Walsh gave some lecture about classical conditioning (maybe, she'd have to ask Willow later), Buffy listened to everything that she didn't say aloud. To her cool, sharp, and rigid dispassion. _What would you do with a voiceless vampire-wolf?_ _With a slayer, a witch, an ex-demon?_ Spike’s warning look was beginning to feel sensible to heed.   


_ "Do you think she could really be non-human?" _ she whispered to Willow.  _ "Ergo; I could just slay her?" _

_ "Didn’t read the text, did you?" _ Willow whispered back.   


Buffy pulled a surly face at her and went back to her observing. The TA - Riley - had all the warmth Walsh didn't, with his open smiles and his floppy, sun-kissed hair. He almost reminded her of some kind of dulled-down, immature, real-world version of Charming. Only less charming. Still, he looked far too affable and apple-pie-ey to be a part of some underground military experiment. He'd even given Willow a sympathetic look over the monkey thing.   


She was useless at judging men; he was probably the evil mastermind. She sighed and tried to tune back in to the content of the lecture, still mulling over  _ humanity  _ and  _ inhumane _ and  _ inhuman _ and how they intersected.

  
  


She'd put the question off in her mind long enough; after her final class of the day, she walked over to Xander’s.   


He let her in, glad but confused by the lack of urgent drama; she twisted her fingers and accepted a glass of some juice replacement thing he was now peddling. It was foul. She told him so.

"So, uh, you here for anything in particular?" he asked eventually. "Not that you haven't unbored my afternoon appreciatively."

_ When you were hyena-boy, how much of that behaviour was yours? _ She looked at her equal-best friend's slightly worried face and said, "Nope, I was just passing by. How was work?" She didn't need to ask. She knew. She just hadn't wanted to. Xander would never hurt her or Willow like that. But the hyena had.

Xander chattered on about work, tossed out her drink and passed her a can of Coke, then made his sympathy-face and said, "Buffy, look, um, I'm sorry about Angel. I'm not saying I didn't loathe the guy with every fibre of my being - are we there yet, at the commiserative loathing stage? - but you liked him…" He gave up and deepened his sympathy-face.   


"You sound like Spike," she said with a half-smile. "Perhaps you two could form a club. Angel Loathers Incorporated." She sighed. "Thanks. I don't want to… don't offer me membership. It is what it is, and I'm not dwelling. I'm non-dwelling girl."

Xander nodded and held out his arms, and she gladly buried herself in a hug. Xander was solid. He wore his faults loud on his chest for everyone to notice first, and his brave, caring heart everywhere between them.   


"I might sound like Spike on the Angel front, but you  _ smell _ like him," he complained as she stepped back.   


"No I don't!" She sniffed her shoulder. "Do I?"

"Eau de canine," he confirmed. "Don't get me wrong, still improving the air in here."

_ But I washed him! _ "Great," she muttered, pouting, and wondered when it had slipped into the background on her clothing. And when it had become nice to bury her face in at night. She changed the subject before she could shock Xander too, telling him, "Willow's found the Clark Kents of our super-secret soldiers."

"Oh?"

"Yep. But you'd better call her yourself. I don't want to steal her limelight." She made her goodbyes and left him to it.

  
  


Back home, Buffy relayed and brainwaved the soldier thing with Spike; distraction tactics from the looming morrow. Between them there was too much to say, and nothing at all that could be said. Removing his collar had not set him free. And he could not be what he would until he was.

As soon as twilight fell they headed out, eschewing the still-busy centre of town and heading outwards, away from anyone who might question Spike’s lack of leash or decidedly undog-like appearance. Although the grooming had helped with that. He could probably pass for a northern breed of some kind now; a sledging dog or something.  _ Probably should have researched for a convincing lie _ . Of course, he'd only be mistaken for a dog if he was willing to act like it. And willing he might be, but she no more wanted to ask him to do that than she wanted to subject him to a leash.   


"Do you want to hike up to the bluff?" she asked him, nodding at the hill edging the sky ahead. "Have you ever been there? Oh; second question first."

He shook his head, watching her.

"There's not really anything up there. But sometimes I like to go sit. Look at the view, watch out for the bat signal, you know." God, this was sounding stupid. "Or we coul-"

Spike nodded, swished his tail.   


Bluff it was. 

  
  


Buffy ignored the path to lead him more directly up the staggered slope, winding around the scraggly bushes which clung low to the dusty, reddish desert soil. Scents of rabbits, mice, quail wafted up at intervals, tempting his nose to follow them instead. Not bloody likely. This felt like a secret, a hidden corner she was letting him peep inside, and he padded in her footprints tasting the blessing of it on his tongue.   


At the top she sat down on a smooth rocky edge with enough of a drop to dangle her feet off, and he planted himself on his haunches beside her, close enough to lean on. Sunnydale spread out below them in the gathering dusk, glowing with streetlights and curtained windows, headlights and rows of shops, bordered to the west by a sliver of the ocean's deeper dark and to the east by the hills up to open plains.

_ Come here often?  _ The words were light in his head, but the thought trailed gravity with it. Easy enough to picture her here alone on lonely nights, watching over a town that didn't know she existed, taking her contentment in the warm huddle of lights that represented her success.   


"Bored yet?" she asked, that note of laughing off embarrassment still in her voice.   


He shook his head and took a deep lungful of the open air before them, scenting to show that he was looking. Observing. Something. The air rose up warm and layered from the town below, plants-people-cars-asphalt-rubbish-wood-tin-mice-rabbits-birds-people-petrol-sand and leaves and yet more people, but mostly he smelt her, warmer and more interesting at his side.   


She smiled sideways at him and went back to watching the view, relaxing against him slightly.   


Shifting his back feet _-_ _feet_ , he needed to start thinking of these body parts as what they had been and would be again - to the side, he braced his shoulder against her firmly, encouraging her to lean against him more.   


She did, head resting on the side of his neck. "Xander said I smell like dog," she told him, a hint of wry amusement in it.   


He huffed a breath of a laugh.  _ He _ smelt like  _ her, _ or parts of her, his coat saturated with the scent of her soap and shampoo, her hands and her hugs. Should probably regret rubbing it back the other way, but he wouldn't, because she was still his, for twenty-four-odd hours and ticking.   


They sat until a grunting roar split the murmuring hush below; an demonistic bellow of challenge. What sort of animals the people here told themselves they heard at night was anyone's guess.   


"There goes the bat signal," she said with a mixture of self-mockery and enthusiasm, swinging her heels a final time before pulling them up.

He wuffed an enthusiastic sound of his own, jumping up as she stood, seconding the promise of fun. It did not matter what they did. Only that he could be with her tonight.   


She laughed at his wuffing-sound, and ruffled his ears before turning to the slope back down. "You've probably got more idea where that came from," she said easily, and waved her arm to invite him to go ahead.

He did. He wagged his tail and led the way. 

  
  


The rude roaring thing was tearing up grass and flowerbeds down by the lake when they caught up to it, kicking up chunks of turf and smashing down plants in a manner that suggested perhaps it had come from Willy's. It looked vaguely human, two-legged and two-armed, a pair of lycra shorts and a baggy knitted vest covering some of its leathery skin. The face was more demony; a bare skull covered in bony little lumps, a turned-up nose and pronounced bottom jaw that hinted at it being a biter.

She had a quip ready about the fashion police arriving, but at the sight of them it started grunting again, building towards another roar as it swung about and stomped towards her, so she dropped that plan and hissed at it, _"People are sleeping out there,"_ before meeting it with a kick to the side.   


Its side was  _ not _ soft; her boot met flesh that felt as lumpy with bone as its head looked. Spinning away from it, she hissed to Spike, "Go wider!"   


His darting semicircular loop moved back a few steps, head low and forward as he searched for an opening.   


The demon followed her turn, voice dropping back to an angry grunt, and swung at her with its fists. She dodged the first one, redirected the second, and slammed her stake at its chest hopefully. It went through the knitted vest. It did not go all the way through the skin.  _ Dammit.  _ Alright, forget trying for a heart. She backed off again, stake still in hand, reassessing fast as it followed her retreat with its hands now trying to snatch at her. It looked kinda pissed about the vest. Enough to be amping up its attack.   


Well, she could do that too. She blocked a couple of swinging arms, backing away, half an eye watching Spike as he dashed in and sunk his teeth into the back of the thing's calf. It roared in surprised outrage, whirling to seek out its unexpected attacker, but he'd already leapt back again, grinning eagerly through his fangs.

She tried to push the advantage, swinging a kick towards the thing's groin; however well armoured a demon might be, they always seemed to be just as vulnerable as the next to a decent kick between the legs.   


It was turning back before her foot connected, catching the kick as a glancing blow on its thigh instead. A split-second later one of its fists came smashing down like an oversized meat tenderiser just above her knee.   


She made her own grunty-sound, half pain and half annoyance, and let herself drop to the ground in a roll before the thing could follow up with its other hand. She rolled once and up into a crouch facing the demon- just in time to see it go sideways as a snarling cannonball of white fur slammed into its chest. 

No wonder Spike hadn't wanted a boost in her dorm window; she'd seriously underestimated how well he could jump. As the demon hit the ground his jaws slammed home on its throat, clenching tight before he strove them in further and deeper with growling rams of his head and strong neck.   


The demon's hands moved, preparing to take a swipe or make a grab at its attacker, a strangled gurgle trying to force from its mouth. 

Buffy tightened her fist, sprang forward, and staked it in the eye (her stake went through that). The hands twitched and tightened on nothing, then fell loosely to the ground.   


She let go of her stake - it could stay there - and sat back. Spike’s growl had steadied into a continuous rumble, his face still buried in the demon's neck, and the fur down his spine was all puffed up again.   


"Spike?" she said softly. "It's dead."

The growl subsided slowly, then he let his grip loosen off and lifted his head away, licking at the roof of his mouth in distaste. He took the position of the stake in with a glance, then his eyes leapt to her and the murder in them melted into worry. Whining, he stepped off the dead demon and closer to her, dropping his posture lower to the ground and keeping his ears pinned back tight against his head, all adrenaline-fuelled agitation.

She opened her arms to him, and he stepped into them thankfully, pressing his forehead against her collarbone. His skin shivered with a little tremor of fading overstimulation, and she found herself murmuring little hushing sounds to him while she smoothed down the fur on his back.   


His breath began to slow from its rapid panting, then he stiffened slightly and pulled away, looking off to the ground to their side.   


"It's okay," she told him quietly. She wasn't sure if she'd meant,  _ it's okay if your wolfy physiology rocks you sometimes, _ or,  _ it's okay for a vampire to need a hug, _ so she just repeated it, "It's okay, Spike."

He twitched the corner of his mouth up in an attempt at a smile, then turned back to nod his chin at her leg in a concerned query.

"It's fine. Nicely tenderised, but fine." Feeling the movement out carefully, she pushed herself to her feet. Where it hurt more, blood rushing twice as fast towards what promised to be an impressive lump of a bruise for a short while. While it wouldn't limit her in a fight, it was only going to be an irritation for longer if she didn't make an allowance for it now. And she did not want to give him an opening to call her a hypocrite. Rethinking the walk-it-off method, she hobbled over to the nearest raised garden and sat down on its wooden border. "But maybe I wouldn't mind sitting for a bit," she admitted.   


Spike ducked his chin in a short nod and sat down on the ground beside her, facing outwards, ears standing straight up to listen to their surroundings. He looked sober and watchful, and comfortable in it.

"Thanks," she told him, and lay down to bend her knee up, letting the cool night air play over it, eyes on the stars and one hand resting on his back. It was kinda nice down here tonight, with the sound of moving water from the little stream which fed the lake and the scent of bruised flower gardens fragrancing the air. She should loop over this way more often. In winter. The last time she'd had to spend any time here at night had been late last summer, and the mosquitoes had driven her crazy.

"Is there anything you want to do tomorrow?" she asked him. "Special, I mean. Anything on your canine bucket list?"  _ Before the unspell changes everything.  _ If it worked. Which she was firmly believing it would, because there was nothing to be gained in thinking otherwise.   


He turned his head to look down at her, face pensive.

"Don't tell me now," she said, as if he could. "Think about it and write it down when we get home. We could… play fetch in the park. Brush out enough fur to felt ourselves hats. Climb up the belltower and howl. I wish I could enter you in one of those dog jumping contests, because you'd obliterate the competition... I've got to make it to Lit first period to hand in that assignment, but then I can blow off the rest of the day."   


His ears shifted and he tilted his muzzle towards a  _ no _ to her silly suggestions.   


She shook her head first. "Later. Think on it."   


With a soft snort of laughter he turned back to watching out for trouble.   


A few minutes later, the burning in her thigh had mostly retreated. She stretched her leg out experimentally, found the movement easy, and sat up again. "We'd better carry on."

Spike cocked one ear and eyebrow at her in a dubious fashion.   


She stood up and stamped her feet gently a couple of times, stirring them back to life. "See? All better."   


He dropped the ear, but still looked unconvinced. Or perhaps unhappy.   


"You  _ know _ I can take a lot more than that without complaint," she told him. "And I so had that guy. He was about to find out what happens when someone makes me get mud on my back." She glanced over at the dead demon, its vest shredded by paws and neck still wet with slobber. "But… you had him first." With a smile she hoped conveyed thanks, she swept her hand around the base of Spike’s ear and patted him a few times on the shoulder.  _ Why, Spike? What part of you cares? _ In battle he fought with all of him, intellect as keen on the challenge as any element of wolfen instinct or soul or simply hormones that spurred his body forward. And he seemed to… care in the same way lately too; without conflict, single-minded in watching her back or returning affection. But he could hardly find the affection he so obviously needed anywhere else at the moment. Their most obvious commonality lay in being mutual weirdos, fitting in because they didn't.  _ Until _ .   


Sighing, she turned for the park gates. 

  
  


God help him, he  _ would  _ fetch sticks for this woman. Enjoy it, too; she'd be bound to get competitive and start throwing them harder-faster-further, then let out a burst of that rare uninhibited and ebullient laughter when he still managed to catch them. She was everything. And somehow, in her presence, he was starting to feel like  _ he _ could be something more.   


Because the girl kept bloody acting as though he were. Sure, they had their flimsy truce, but that was no reason to welcome him into her life, her secrets, her soft places. She knew he had a mouth in him that could slice into her weaknesses mercilessly; knew he could take everything he'd learnt of her and turn on her with all the callous cruelty typical of his kind. And yet she opened herself to him anyway. Gave to him. Gave him everything she had that he might need, then set about procuring the things that she didn't.   


He'd expected further demands from her once they got out of mirrorville. The pages of fine print on their agreement;  _ Be polite to mom. Don't bite anyone. Don't sell out my secrets to the first demon you come across after leaving town. Do these three tasks for us in return for fixing you.  _ Instead, she'd simply acted as though he was someone who didn't need to be contracted; as though he could be expected - trusted - to do the right thing on his own. And when that had become daunting - when 'friskiness' had been a potential misstep in his attempts to behave the way she needed - she'd settled it by telling him that the only prohibition he needed to place on himself was that of biting.   


The Spike she somehow saw him as was someone she considered worth protecting, caring for, helping; someone  _ worth _ something. The only thing that seemed certain to change that was him becoming someone she had to protect the rest of her people from. Again.   


And when she looked at him with those trusting, summer-meadow eyes, he ached to prove he could be what she thought he was. Stay what he was to her.

Pacing beside her quietly along the pale stream of a moonlit footpath, anything felt within reach.

  
  


She was quiet as she got ready for bed, enough bittersweetness in her smile to trickle a slow chill into his determination from earlier. He could tell himself all the stories he wanted, but the truth would always surface eventually. He was a Trojan horse here. It was only the pretty horsey that she'd taken in and accepted it for what it was, not the enemy lying inside it. And she was becoming sombre now because she knew this was likely the last time she would be able to snuggle up to it in bed.   


Still she smiled and wriggled over to make room for him, pushing her own concerns aside to be what she thought he needed. Regular Buffy. Any other night. Ready to help with anything he might need, while pretending she needed nothing for herself.

He wished, for a moment, that he had his own voice back to speak to her. To ask her what  _ she  _ wanted; not for him, not for ethics and morals, not for the greater good, but purely, selfishly for herself. To ask if she could ever accept the word of a magic-affected vampire that there was nothing he desired more than to be hers, in whatever capacity she needed. He knew the answer though. She would not consider his feelings freely expressed until he could speak them. And if she did choose a wolf, she would never consider anything she could do for him enough to make up for having selfishly trapped him in this shape. It would taint what they had, pitting it with a rot that would decay away everything that had made this time precious. So he said nothing, wrote nothing, and pressed in close to her in bed. 


	23. One more dawn

He was dozing in his half-aware canine way when the first pre-dawn birdsong began outside, experimental tweets into the first hint of twilight. One bird was joined by another, and another, until the whole sleeping town seemed to ring with their mingled chorus. He filtered through the song with his incredible ears, focusing on this voice and that, pondering the question of  _ is there anything special you want to do today?  _ The black-blue of night shaded slowly towards navy, and he thought of an answer.   


Sliding carefully out from under her arm, he padded over to the door and worked the handle with a silent twist of his mouth, heading outside.   


From Buffy's letterbox, the eastern horizon was formed by the rooftops just across the street, but that was neither here nor there. The sun would appear over them too. The birdsong grew ever louder as dawn approached, into a tumultuous racket that it was hard to believe anyone could sleep through. Yet most of them did, only the occasional sound of a mechanical alarm or cold-starting car carrying from the distance. People mostly knew when to stay safely tucked up in bed here, he supposed.   


The sky shifted into pure liquidy blues and a building tinge of gold light, and he changed his mind about the view of rooftops and backed up to Buffy’s front porch, where from a perch on the railing he could see clean across to the true town horizon of the hills. The few streaky wisps of cloud in the eastern half of the sky turned from pastel greys to pinks and oranges and finally to a rich, vibrant gilt lacing embellishing the inside-out ocean behind them, curling and twisting like the ends of her hair.

The sun neared, touched, and finally began to rise above the line of hills, blinding and brilliant and aweing in its power, life-giving and death-bringing and inextinguishable. Sunrise-yellow light fell peacefully on his coat, marking him as another living creature in the light, part of the audience of birds and insects and leaves and grasses for this daily miracle. It was beautiful.

And then he tiptoed back inside. 

  
  


His fur had cooled in the cold morning air, so he crept up on the end of the bed where he would not freeze her awake. She was beautiful in sleep. As golden and warm and nourishing as the sun, yet close enough to scent, touch, hear. Close enough to catch.   


How did they go, those verses he had long ago refused to reread (for he would not be forced into some mythological role just for putting on a pair of costume ears). Refusal or otherwise, they soon murmured up again in memory…  _ 'The old witch in the eastern wood sat, and bore the brood of wolves… Among these one in monster's guise, was soon to steal the sun from the sky.' _ And Sköll took the sun in his jaws, and the world ended. The stupid fucker probably burnt his mouth, but how could he ever have resisted closing his teeth on the bright golden ball he had chased so long?   


Creeping closer now that the chill had evaporated from his coat, he stretched out and rested his muzzle on the bed to study the tiny details of her face. The warm blonde-brown of her naked eyelashes, the resting curve of her lips.  _ I would not take you from the sky. I would worship you with tender jaws and defend the world to receive your blessing. Let me not chase but walk beside you in your golden light, and I shall be content. _ Fuck, the drivel embarrassed him in his own brain. He was going to have to watch his damn tongue when his voice came back, or the girl would think wolfhood had thoroughly addled any brains he'd had. Keep it cool, calmly logical, not the desperate, stuttered proclamations of a lovelorn fool.  _ I love you. Love-love-love-love you. As a wolf and in a monster's guise, forever and always, amen. _ Sigh. 

  
  


His own personal sun woke eventually, and ruffled her fingers through his fur in affection. He rolled over, inviting her to scratch that spot on his chest and up his neck that filled him with a blissful feeling of contentment under her fingers. She took the invitation, scratching and massaging her fingers through his fur with a sense of extra indulgence, then sighed wistfully to herself and got up.   


_ Why can't you be selfish?  _ He held his breath on the sad little whine that wanted to come from his throat, and slid off the bed. Time to shake himself out of flights of fancy and down into grittier reality. Tonight would be good. Resuming his immortality would be more than good. His jaw ached a little this morning from the excessive pressure that he'd put on it last night, an occasional background reminder of all the vulnerabilities he could do without and soon would. Pasting on a firm smile, he nodded at Buffy and let himself outside.

  
  


_ "Don't skip class",  _ he wrote on the fridge while she showered and dressed.   


"I don't mind," she said after reading it. "Really, no big. I'll just drop that assignment in and then I'm yours for the day."   


He shook his head. She was probably right; with the amount of work she'd somehow squeezed into the last few afternoons, she might be back on top enough to safely skive off a few end-of-week classes. But she'd set the standard; no selfishness.   


"Oh. I guess you've probably got things you want to do," she said, hurt but trying to cover it.   


He pulled his lip up to flash his teeth at her in annoyance, shaking his head again. Damn woman still leapt straight to the wrong conclusion every time, and it would take more words than the fridge could hold to adequately express his thoughts on that. Picking up the pen again, he wrote,  _ "Stupid. You." _ He shot her a rebuking look, and she pressed her lips together, stormily holding her response back until he was finished.  _ "I usually sleep. Do something after. Fetch your sodding sticks." _ No, probably not quite the full reasoning he'd meant to convey. Fuck this was frustrating.  _ "Need attendance, yeah?" _   


She huffed her own frustrated sound. "Probably," she admitted in a grumble. "Are you sure? And I didn't really mean the fetching. Unless you want to?" she asked dubiously. "Sorry, multiple questions. Are you sure?"

He yawned, prompting the ache in his jaw to remind him of its presence. Hell, maybe he would sleep. No fun in transforming into a vampire with a sore mouth.   


"Okay, got the picture," she told him. "Yoghurt?"   


He nodded and stepped back from the fridge for her to open it. 

  
  


Though the winter sun shone weak from its position low in the south, it was sunlight all the same, so he spread himself out on the back porch to soak it in. Sunbathing like this always gave him a strange urge to lick his sun-warmed fur, which he ignored along with every other peculiar urge of his body that he could see no fun in nor practical benefit from. He made an exception for his feet, however. They obligated frequent inspection to keep the spaces between each pad free of prickly bits of plants, and licking them over thoroughly was the best way to do it. Well, the best outside of having Buffy take each paw gently in her hands and shampoo it carefully.   


With half an ear, he followed the sound of Joyce’s feet in the house, opening and closing drawers in her bedroom up above as she packed for her trip. He couldn’t decide if this was a good thing or not. On one hand, it might give vampire-him a chance to talk things out with Buffy in private, on her home turf, where current-him had, he thought, proven himself trustworthy. On the other… she might give vampire-him a curt hello-goodbye nod, then bolt back to the dorm and the company of her friends while waiting for him to get gone. It seemed unlikely, given everything they'd shared; it seemed very likely, given the impenetrable wall she could flip up at the flick of a switch for anyone else in the world. And it made his stomach cold if he tried to analyse it any further.   


Maybe he should write her a letter. Just in case. Something he could hand to her and say,  _ this is how I still feel, _ then take her cue to leave and keep his head down while she took her time thinking it over. But what would he write? It all came back to three tiny words, and he should say those to her face.

"Spike?" Joyce asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway. "Would you come inside, please. I'd like to speak to you."

Forget his stomach feeling cold at his own thoughts; this was more like drinking deep from that icy forest pond. For a split-second he was not Spike the Big Bad Wolf, nor the Trojan vampire, but the embarrassed little boy who had dropped his mother's favourite teacup and hidden the evidence under a sideboard. Feeling his ears dip themselves, he went inside.   


"I don't pretend to understand anything about vampires," she began. "Or about the relationship you have with my daughter. But it's plain to see that you both enjoy each other's company very much. And you've been a perfectly civil guest this week. What I'm trying to say is, if you need some time to get back on your feet once you're back on your feet, you would be perfectly welcome to continue staying here. The guest bedroom is going empty, or we do have a basement downstairs if you would find that more suitable."

Christ, this woman was bonkers. Stark, raving, certifiably bonkers. How in the hell she could take the problem of 'turning back into a vampire' and hear only 'will require different sleeping arrangements' was beyond him, and had he been capable, he'd have lambasted her for it. Buffy had enough bleeding trouble to worry about without her mum moving stray vampires into her spare rooms.   


"Anyway, you two can sort it out together if you decide that's something you'd like to do," she continued. "I just wanted to make it clear before I leave. I'd hate for you to be worrying about whether you were still welcome to stay, with… all the other adjustments." She turned to the sink to fill up her water bottle, screwed the lid back on, and told him, "I've got to get on the road. Good luck with this magic-thing tonight."   


He managed a vague nod of thanks, then she was gone.   


Well, shit.  _ Sorry, slayer, but I think I might've gone and fucked up your mum's notion of vampires.   
_

He snickered to himself uncomfortably at it all. Fuck but it was a daunting mess. Still. The sun was still shining. He still had a body that could enjoy it. He returned to his spot on the porch, stretching up to snag a pear from the fruit bowl on his way past. He couldn’t quite convince himself to try the apples, but pears were tasty. 

  
  


Buffy came home with a camera. One of those disposable types.   


"Can I?" she asked, waving it carelessly as if it didn't matter either way, the motion too affected to be natural. "In case I ever do decide to take up scrapbooking to fill my empty days. _ Here's that time Spike was a wolf… _ " She tittered nervously.   


_ Yeah.  _ He nodded. It didn't have to mean anything, except that this furry body would soon be no more and she wanted something to remember it by. Swished his tail.  _ Course you can.   
_

"Good." Her smile relaxed and she started peeling off the camera's plastic packaging. "Plans? We don't have to be at Giles's until eight."

He tilted his chin in a gesture to follow and led her to the fridge.  _ "Watch the sun go down." _ It was stupid and clichéd, but so fucking what; weren't many people lucky enough to have advance warning that a sunset could be their last, so he was damn well going to take a gander at it. Was pretty sure he'd never even seen the sun on his last day of human life. Between the smog and fog of all the little errands and worries that had seemed so very important, he couldn’t remember ever stopping to lift his eyes to whatever sky hung above. A dingy grey one, probably; cold gruel, only less appetising. Didn’t take a genius to work out why London had been so popular with the sun-averse crowd.   


Buffy crouched down to read the words, and he watched her eyes take on that shimmery, touched look. She was such a mushy sentimentalist, somewhere under all the battle-lust and cold analyticalism.  _ Deep _ under. "Oh," she said quietly. "I didn't…" A hint of colour touched her cheeks; she'd obviously forgotten about the whole sun-allergy part of the equation. "Of course. You should. Do you want me to come along, or is that the sort of thing it's best to do alone?"

He wanted to shrug it off, point out that it was no big deal, just something to kill time instead of watching TV or something. But she'd probably take that as her having reacted wrongly somewhere. Fuck it. It was a fuck it kind of day. He nudged his nose in her direction and wagged his tail, smiling.  _ Come. Wherever we're going. _   


She smiled as if he'd given her something precious. Hell, pour on the sentimentalism and let the clichés roll. Buffy was going to watch the sunset with him, and it couldn't be a stupid idea if she treasured it.

"We could go back up to the bluff?" she suggested. "Round the side a little further; you can see more of the ocean."

He nodded his head in quick agreement, then squirmed it under her arm onto her lap to be hugged and tousled. She loved doing that. She should be extra encouraged to this afternoon.   


"Anything else you want to do?" she asked.   


He shook his head on her lap, shrugged his shoulders.  _ Anything.   
_

"Hmm…" she mused, smooshing his ears and the sides of his face around. "Why don't we make a thing of it? Take a blanket, and, like, get ice cream or something. Detour past the lake and see what it looks like during the day. Or not. I mean, that's probably kinda lame," she finished, with a fake laugh.

Christ she was adorable like this, when all of her brilliant slayer confidence tripped over and vanished at the obstacle of a normal young woman's desires. He licked his lips several times, looking up at her face and wagging his tail.   


"You like the ice cream suggestion?" she asked, shyly hopeful.   


He nodded again, rocking her on her heels a little.   


"Okay," she laughed, her free hand going to the floor for balance. "I think we have a picnic rug somewhere."

  
  


The lake park felt more than a touch uncanny, with its little plaques naming tree species instead of dead people, its white ribbon and  _ apologies _ sign on last night’s damaged flower bed. They passed a few people sitting by the lake edge, reading books or sketching the scenery, all lighthearted tranquillity in the winter sun. One of them waved at her and Spike. She'd forgotten Sunnydale had places like this. Clearly she'd been spending too much time in cemeteries of late.   


The daydreamy mood of it all almost made her wish for a parasol and one of those big flower-covered hats, a costume to match this strange little detour. Spike must have felt it too, because his feet were almost prancy as he skipped along at her side.   


"Cool dog!" a boy called out from the park bench he was lounging on with a friend. They were probably tagging on it or something. But she was going to pretend they were having a picnic too.   


Spike snorted in amusement and upped his prancing, playing the showy dog to the point of jeering, jesting sarcasm.   


"Why thank you!" she called back. Then grinned down at him and said, "Your irrepressible ability to both show off and mock the entire concept of it at the same time is quite a skill. Not a very useful one, but, a skill."

He laughed and skipped around her legs in a snatch of high-spirited energy, a taunting look in his eyes.

"You could be that Norse wolf. The 'One Who Mocks'. Sko? Skull?"   


He froze in place, a mutinous glare smothering the humour from his face and a low rumble of a warning growl in his chest.   


She stopped too, instantly regretting whatever about the words had upset him. "Spike," she murmured, frowning. "You're Spike, okay?" Stung, she added, "I would never try to change it."

His growl cut into one of those distressed little whines, and he…  _ shrank _ was the best way to describe these full-body expressions of something like remorse. His ears fell, his shoulders dropped, and all of him became lower and intent on squirming closer to her.   


Now she felt like a big bully. She crouched down and put a hand on his side, stroking along his flank while she thought. These mercurial leaps without words attached to them were too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion on. Quite how he always managed to push her buttons so effectively she couldn’t fathom, but as the party most capable of articulation, taking a breath and pulling her own emotions back felt like the decent thing to do.   


Spike drew in his own deep, centering breath and blew it out heavily, calming his squirmy feet and angling his hip around for her to scratch.   


"I should probably still be being careful with the name-thing, huh?" she asked. "Lingering fairy magic, et cetera. We don't want you to come out of the spell speaking only Norse."   


He ducked his muzzle in a bashful little scoff, shaking his head as if to cast the whole argument aside as unimportant.   


It still kinda felt like she'd still missed the mark somewhere, but maybe that didn't matter. Neither of them had meant to upset each other. Slapping him on the side a final time, she stood up again, determined to try and salvage the playful mood from earlier.   


Spike shook his coat into a bounce, then trotted ahead down the path, looking back over his shoulder with a hopeful smile.

She grinned back and caught up. 

  
  


Beyond the final flowerbeds was a tree-lined empty playing field of level grass, stretching out to the road. Spike considered it idly, then dipped off the treeward side of the path and cast about until he came up with a stick, carrying it back to her.

She took it dubiously, quirking an eyebrow at him. "You want me to throw it?"

He loped partway out onto the field and stood watching her.

"Okay," she said with a shrug. She pulled her arm back, aimed at the middle of the field, and threw it in a high curve that he might  _ just  _ have a chance of catching.   


Spike stood watching her, his lip sneaking up into a smirk.

Right. Of course not. "Ha. Ha," she told him flatly, rolling her eyes. "Your practical jokes are amazing." She kept walking.   


From the corner of her eye, she saw him turn to look at where the stick had fallen, glance at her, and then take off running back the way they'd come.

"What are you…?" she called after him, giving up when he showed no sign of slowing to respond.   


She raised a frustrated hand and slapped it down on her thigh, then stood waiting. He must be coming back.   


He did, something green clutched in his jaws. Plants. Plants from the gardens. Pulling to a halt in front of her, he sat down and held out a clump of foliage and yellow daisy-shaped flowers. He must have torn it from one of the bushes of them they'd passed earlier.   


"Metaphorical olive branch of  _ beautiful flowers _ ?" she asked, taking it from him, a smile sneaking up on her.   


He pulled that saccharine apology-face, all big puppy eyes and soft ears.   


"You…" she said, discarding several terms that leapt to mind. None of them fitted, anyway. "...Spike." The flower heads were dropping a little already, looking every bit as though they'd been run with while dangling from his jaws. She smoothed the trailing leaves out as best she could to protect them, then slung off her backpack and tucked them safely into the side pocket. No one had ever picked her flowers before, and these snatched and battered ones were somehow ridiculous enough to make them feel hers. "Thank you," she told him fondly. "Now we should skedaddle, before someone comes after us for even further garden destruction." Giggling, she hurried with him to the exit. 

  
  


She wasn't supposed to  _ keep  _ the flowers. They were miserable, a throwaway token to apologise for what had in swift retrospect been a bit of a dick move. He was all across the place this afternoon, elation and terror and nail-biting anticipation sparking across the blanket of contentment that spending time with her purely for fun was, and now she was treasuring his purloined mouthful, and hell, he needed to get a grip on himself before he fell apart in her lap.   


After a stop at the store, they took the actual path up to the bluff, playacting by mutual silent accord again that they were the sort of people who strolled along demarcated paths for pleasure on empty afternoons. Well, he was playacting. She could well do this again tomorrow if she fancied.   


Except that as he thought that, she was stepping over the ankle-high path border to take a more direct route. He chuckled silently and followed her.   


On a flat bit of dusty ground with a good view over to the ocean, she spread out the picnic rug she'd brought and two tubs of ice cream. "Do you want a drink?" she asked, waving a water bottle. "Because I brought a cup."

He shook his head and lay down on the blanket carefully. Fuck, this was an awful lot of pressure to put on a wolf. Was beginning to feel like the kind of proper event he had no good experience with, and what the hell had given him the idea he could ever bloody hope to court her favour once he had a whole human body to stuff things up with?   


She sat down beside him and shot him a happy smile as she took the lids off the ice cream.

Right. The possibilities had given him that idea. He would move sodding heaven and earth and fail a thousand times if there was some fraction of a chance that she would smile at him like that when he got it right. He shifted his paws for her to pass him his tub, smiling back at her. 

  
  


"It looks different during the day," she mused, waving her spoon to indicate the town below. "Bigger, blander… less personal. Somehow."   


He nodded, getting it. Rooftops and streets stood out stark and detached in the late sunlight, somehow uncaring without their little beacon glows in the dark.   


"Water's nice though," she added more happily, turning her face that way to watch the shimmering play of light on the western horizon's waters. She swept her spoon hopefully around the bottom of corners of her ice cream tub again, then licked it clean and stretched over to drop it back into her bag. Taking his empty tub, she tucked it into hers and tossed them both beside her bag, then stretched out on her stomach and elbows beside him.   


The sun was dropping faster now, shadows stretching steadily longer and deeper below them. The tone of the light began to shift, yellows and reds slowly replacing cold white, and he watched the effect of it on her face, the way the golden earthy tones in her eyes glowed brighter with it.   


She turned to look at him, seemed about to say something, then shifted onto her side instead and reached a hand over to pat him, running her hand from between his ears down to his withers. "You seem… more relaxed now. Ice cream's good like that, huh?"   


He thumped his tail, licked the sides of his muzzle again. Suppressed the urge to lick her face. Ice cream was good. Lying here with Buffy was good. His rusted-wire unsettlement about later, tomorrow, all the tomorrows after, had melted away into the future where it belonged. Impossible not to be happy here and now, at ease in the golden world with his own personal sun god twirling her fingers through his fur. Tomorrow the sun would rise again for her, and that was enough.   


The astronomical sun set, sinking down into the ocean silently, the town below dulling into dusk shadow while the last rays added a golden hue to even his pale moonlight coat. He felt no gloomy sense of impending loss of the sight of it; more of a vague impression of ease that he was observing some ancient ritual correctly.   


Buffy picked up her camera again and snapped a photo of him watching it, then one of the colour-hazed sky left in its wake. Winding the film on… and on, she told him, "It's full," and tucked it back into her bag before resting her chin on her forearms again.   


He thumped his tail again, and they watched the town's lights grow.


	24. Friday night

Everyone was waiting at Giles's when they arrived. Giles and Jenny, obviously. Willow had brought Tara, explaining, "Miss Calendar suggested she be our third _. _ "

"O-only if you think that would be right," Tara added in an apologetic stammer.

Buffy glanced at Spike, then gave Tara a shrug. "If that's what the resident experts say. Not my area."   


Xander was there because he was Xander, and Anya because she seemed to still be inviting herself wherever he went.   


"We're going to do it in the courtyard," Jenny explained from the kitchen. "Since I'm really not sure what will happen if we create a vampire inside the threshold of a home. Unless you've got any experience in that regard?" she asked Spike.   


He shook his head and jumped up onto one of the dining chairs, sitting up with his tail curled tightly around his paws. The seat put him more on a level with everyone else, and with a solid wall to his back.

She took the chair beside him and dug through her bag for her ring-bound notebook and pen; he'd turned down her offer to bring the flashcards, though he'd been making use of them with Mom. They were, she suspected, too frustrating a method of communication for this situation. He could growl well enough to tell everyone to wait if he needed to write something.   


"In about… twenty minutes?" Jenny finished.   


Spike twitched his muzzle in a tiny nod.   


"Sounds good," Buffy relayed. Turning back to Spike, she asked, "Bloody - Scotch - Now?"

His ears perked up, then sank sadly. He shook his head.   


"Do not drink alcohol or operate machinery while being de-spelled? Look at you with the sagacity." Maybe she should have one for him. Her hands were all fidgety.   


Jenny, Willow and Tara went outside to set up whatever they needed to set up, then Anya wanted to discuss the fairy-tale ballgown and sword that were still hanging in the lounge, and Xander had something to tell her, and then Jenny was calling them.   


"Spike-" she said as he hopped down from his chair. He looked up, and she waved the others to go on ahead. "Give us a moment."   


Giles had his worry-face on, but he followed Xander and Anya out and closed the door.

She looked down at Spike and didn't know what she'd wanted to say.   


Spike didn't seem to have anything either, everything and nothing filling his quiet eyes as he padded closer to her. She squatted down to offer him a wordless hug. A soft smile crossed his lips, then his head was tucked over her shoulder, pressing her into him, one paw lifted to hug around her back.   


His furry chest thumped steadily against hers, and she had to swallow hard to ward off tears.  _ I'm going to miss this you.  _ Whatever happened. Which she wasn't going to try and predict now, because they could step outside and get on with it and then it would be actionable and not just speculation and… Time to grit her teeth and stop this uncharacteristic urge to delay.   


Spike drew in a deep breath and sighed it out, tickling the top of her back, then she patted his side a final time and drew back.   


"Come on. Let's go fix you," she murmured with only a slight wobble, and led him outside. 

  
  


The witches had chalked a white circle onto the paving stones, six feet or so across. With the sort of confident authority of someone who knew what they were about, Jenny asked him to sit in the centre of it and ensure he kept all of himself inside the lines. "And… perhaps in a position that's still going to be comfortable after you've changed."

He nodded soberly at her, stepped carefully over the chalk line, and sat down on his haunches tidily, tucking his tail around his feet- hands again. People could sit like this, couldn’t they? Fuck, it'd been so long. He was probably going to make an arse of himself falling over even if his legs did work.   


"Right," Jenny said. "That looks good. It's a fairly simple working; we'll be walking and chanting while we gather power, then we'll turn and direct it into the circle, cleansing all magic from inside it. You might feel something like a wave of water, or a gust of wind, then it'll be done. Try to stay still."

"Wait, you need a blanket!" Buffy said. Turning to Jenny, she told her urgently, "Hang on while I get one."

Right. Potential nudity. The possibility of flashing a bit of skin was well down on his list of concerns, but, yeah, alright, he would feel less vulnerably exposed with something to tuck around his waist. Fighting naked was always a smitch dodgier than he preferred fighting to be. Not that there was going to be any fighting. Xander and his bird were sticking close to the safety of the apartment door and the crossbow behind it, Giles had some kind of weapon ready in his coat pocket, Jenny stood in front of a solid garden spade that just happened to have been left on the ground, and he didn't have a speck of trust in a bleeding one of them, but… here she came, with the throw blanket from Giles's couch. They were her team.  _ Her  _ he trusted.   


"It won't affect the spell?" she asked Jenny.   


"That's my afghan!" Giles protested.

"No, it'll be fine," Jenny said, turning to Giles at the end with a quelling look.

"It'll be in need of a wash is what it'll be," he muttered in resignation.   


Buffy settled the blanket over and around him like an oversized cape, knotting two corners together to hold it together at his throat. "Okay?" she asked in a whisper as she finished tying it, her anxious eyes close to his.

He gave her a tiny nod.  _ Yes. _ Anything was okay if she was here.   


"Okay," she said with more confidence, and stepped carefully back out of the circle.   


Willow and Tara took up their positions around the circle, Jenny stepped forward to take hers, and the three of them began murmuring words in a low chant, walking left-handed around the circle.   


Left-handed, widdershins; against the turning of the sun. Which made sense, with what Jenny had said about linking the magic to the retreating moon, and made even more sense with the obvious symbolism the anti-sun carried for what they were hoping to accomplish. And it was his despelling. It damn well should be correct-handed. Make him his sinister-handed vampiric self again.

Buffy stood directly in front of him, leaning her calves against the fountain, arms folded across herself and eyes never moving from his. The witches passed between them as they paced their circle, but he tuned them out of his awareness, rendering them as unnoticed as blinking, even as they moved faster, chanted louder.   


The fur down his back began to prickle, like the subconscious sensation of power building ahead of a brewing thunderstorm. The air grew staticky, electric and alive, and he pinned his whiskers back as the power grew and grew.

Until the witches stopped in their rotation, turning inwards and raising their hands to the sky, then swept their palms down towards the circle. And the thunderclap came.   


He felt the whoosh of it rushing inwards, at and into him from every part of the circle's border, neither quite wave-like nor wind-blast, but a sensation all its own. From the skin of his pads on the ground, it bolted up through him, out to and through the very tips of his ears, and beyond into the night sky above.   


It took a moment for him to grab hold of any of his senses again, flooded as they all were by the momentary onslaught. First, his paws were gripping the ground as if to cling onto it and thus escape him being flung into the moon. Second, they still felt like his paws. He tensed muscles, feeling his body out for confirmation, feeling for the presence of his tail. Check.   


"Umm…" Buffy said, looking between Jenny on one side and Willow and Tara on the other, where they'd respectively stepped back. "How long should it…?" she asked apprehensively.   


He glanced down at his front paws where they poked out of the edge of the blanket. Yeah, still appeared to be paws. Now that the slap of magic had faded, he felt perfectly normally wolven in every way. His eyes jumped back to Buffy.   


"You look the same," she told him quickly. "Oh god, you are, aren't you? They haven't turned you into a real wolf by mistake… No, ignore me sorry. Paranoid conclusion-jumping." She turned back to Jenny, urging an explanation.   


"It shouldn't. Can't. Take any time," Jenny answered. "Unless either of you noticed anything unexpected-" she looked to Willow and Tara, who shook their heads. "Then I would say the magic itself worked beautifully. But that whatever has made a wolf of him- of you, it can't be undone with a general reversal spell."

"Can't you try again?" Buffy asked.   


"It wouldn't help," Jenny said, then nodded at Willow and Tara. "And not tonight. Come inside, girls, and sit down properly. That was rather more effective at drawing forth power than I had anticipated." She turned to him again. "Sorry, you can move now. Let's  _ all _ go and sit down and catch our breath before we discuss anything further."

He gave her a respectful nod back. They were clearly wiped, and he had no idea how he felt about this turn of events.   


"Okay," Buffy conceded in a neutral tone, clearly only pausing her questions for the interim. Stepping into the circle, she crouched down and untied his blanket, her fierce and worried eyes silently enquiring.  _ Is it okay? Are you? What do you need right now?   
_

He smiled a little, licked the roof of his mouth and swallowed nervously, then gave her an uncertain little nod.   


"We'll suss it out," she whispered.   


She would. He nodded again, more confident reassurance in it.  _ I know, luv. It's okay.  _   


Her eyes settled, and she ran her fingers through the fur on his throat softly before standing up and sweeping the rest of the blanket off him. 

  
  


Inside, Giles handed out drinks, Xander pulled out a box of doughnuts, and everyone took a few minutes to refortify themselves with warmth and sugar.   


He shrugged an,  _ I don't know _ at the offer of various types of doughnuts; Buffy shook her head in mock disappointment and fetched him a jam-filled thing, holding it up for him with one hand while eating her own. He tore bites off it carefully, glad to not be getting the stuff on his paws, and wagged his tail at her in thanks. When he'd taken the last piece from her fingers, she spread them out, all sticky and jam-smeared and in need of licking. He hesitated; her eyes flicked to the rest of the room and back, then she folded her fingers away, shoving the end of her own doughnut in her mouth and going into the kitchen to wash her hands.   


He sighed to himself quietly, at them both, at this blurry casual intimacy they were justifying loudly between themselves but tucking away from any possible external scrutiny.   


The witches were discussing the failed spell; everyone was excited by how well the three of them had worked together. How much more fluently things had flowed than the time they'd used Giles in third place. But not  _ too _ excited, voices held in check by sensitivity for his listening ears. Silly things. They'd done their part beautifully; it wasn't their fault that whatever had been done to him was no standard magical working. Bloody Dru. Nothing she'd concocted could ever be simple and clear. The key to undoing the transformation was probably some nonsense riddle of a puzzle that required him to walk on his head for a week, or sing backwards while juggling rocks, or fly to the moon. No matter. This lot seemed more than capable of figuring out how to hack into it sideways.   


He caught Tara watching him, and gave her a wag of his tail and silent nod. She liked that.   


"So," Buffy said, standing where she could see them all, arms folded again and every bit the practical leader. Reassuring. "What are we thinking?"   


"The spell didn't work," Anya offered helpfully.   


_ Well, yeah. _   


Buffy glanced at her, frowned slightly, and said, "Yes… what else?"   


"I think," Jenny said, eyes narrowed in thought, "we should have included  _ you  _ in the circle."   


Buffy raised her eyebrows. "Because I might be hiding a tail inside these pants?"   


"Because he's  _ your _ wolf. Your… property, in a sense - sorry, Spike - mystically tied to you."

Buffy lifted a hand, rejecting the statement. "He is  _ not  _ tied to me. He-" she glanced at him, asking.

He ducked his chin in a short nod.  _ Tell them anything that might help.   
_

"He  _ had _ a collar. I was given it. I burnt it. I don't  _ own  _ him."

"Buffy," Giles spoke up in a calm, smooth tone. "You traded a  _ heart _ for him - a unicorn's, at that - along with objects representing restriction and dormancy. You might not have been intending to… purchase him, but I believe that's exactly what you did. The spell could be rooted in your ownership rights."   


"And maintained by the exercise of them," Jenny cut in, glancing at Giles and then to Buffy. "You've told him where to sleep, have you not?"

Buffy pressed her lips together and shot a warning glare at Willow; she must have said something to her.

"And he doesn't have his  _ own  _ collar to replace the one that was yours," Jenny finished.   


Buffy turned to him, guilt-ridden distress in her eyes and pale cheeks. "I didn't…"   


He shook his head quickly, twitching his lip in a smile at the irony, and refocused his attention on the rest of the room.  _ I know, pet.   
_

Buffy followed his lead, swallowing back her emotions and turning to the others. "So we do it again, with me in the circle too."   


Jenny nodded slowly. "Yes. And perhaps…"

_ Hell. _ She'd better not be about to suggest that Buffy should cast him away.   


She didn't. "We're not going to be up for trying again tonight," she said, including Willow and Tara in the statement with a sweep of her eyes. "We'll have to reconvene tomorrow, and I'll do some more research in the meantime."

Buffy sighed, the same barely stifled frustration in it that he felt. They'd worked themselves into being ready for tonight; carrying that feeling over was going to be tough. But maybe they could go kill stuff after they left. Take this as an extra night the universe had granted them.   


"Okay," Buffy said wearily. Looking around the others, she asked, "How are you all getting home? It's soldier-patrol night, apparently. I don't want anyone bumping into them in the dark."

Jenny made to speak, but Giles shushed her with a little shake of his head. " _ I'll _ drive everyone. You stay right there." Looking back at Buffy, he told her, "You can head out now if you want."

"Thanks," she said, grateful. " _ All _ of you."   


Smiles flickered between them, sharing their sense of mingled encouragement and disappointment. This, he was beginning to catch a hint of, was what Xander was doing here. He was part of the team. It didn't matter that he had nothing to offer by way of magic skill or fighting power (or, it seemed, intelligent knowledge). He cared. He was her friend. So he was welcome. Besides, he'd brought the doughnuts. 

  
  


He'd expected her to head towards campus and the opportunity to try and spy on the soldiers, but Buffy turned the other way outside the watcher's gate. She wandered along, thoughts obviously elsewhere, expression tinged with melancholy. He suspected her feet were taking them in the general direction of Revello by habit as much as anything, but was content with wherever they were going; glad for the breathing space made of silence and motion. There was a lot to think over.   


On the surface (and with the way Buffy had related events to her), Jenny's theory made sense. Buffy had, technically, purchased ownership of him. With a bodice lace of a restraining collar, golden pins of somnolent stasis, a heart.   


Except. Those weren't emotionless coins in a banking transaction; they were multidimensional layers of verse and metaphor. A ribbon was not just a ribbon in fairy nor magic. And she had seemed to subvert, invert, and repudiate them at every turn. For herself, and for him. It did not pair that the powers they represented would hold him squarely in this form in her ownership.   


Under the surface, then. Look for truths swimming in the poetry of it and hidden in the details she'd kept quiet about. Pull it apart…   


Ribbon; she had willfully discarded hers of corset lace, and  _ burnt _ his of blackberry… The memory of rubbing his neck clean in a muddy ice puddle leapt suddenly to mind. A red ring of enemy blood, placed around his neck by her arms.  _ Hell _ . But no, she'd washed it away, washed it and scrubbed it with several rounds of shampoo. It probably wasn't that.   


Pins… she had woken him up, in every way. The prosaic removal of said pins. The verbal slapping he'd needed to wake up and look at himself and his castle life. And the stirring inside of him this week as old instincts and urges gradually awoke to her presence. So he was more than covered. For herself… she'd turned her back on the Angel-fantasy, and if that wasn't a much-needed awakening, he didn't know what was. She'd stirred these things inside him, buried urges of her own calling to them. And she'd given him her sleeping self, night after night, of her own free choice, and risen safely each morning by the same. It probably wasn't those.   


A heart. Simplest, and most complex. Hers blazed and smouldered, warmed and sheltered, and gave and gave and bloody  _ gave. _ She had won the unicorn's. She had won the real unicorn's, too, he had no doubt, and only refused the offer to claim it. And his; his was all hers.   


He needed to offer it to her. Needed to tell her,  _ this is yours. I love you.  _ Let her reject it. Let her scorch it and throw it away. It did not matter as long as he gave it, for how could she refuse that which he had not presented to her? If she  _ had _ involuntarily taken mystical ownership of him, then this had to be where the problem lay. And it could well bugger up any de-transformation they tried. Fairy-tale magic was  _ old _ magic, timeless as bedrock. Most importantly of all, though; she deserved telling.

He stopped walking.   


She took two steps further, then turned back to him, almost startled by the interruption to her thoughts. Her eyes flicked around in a quick scan for trouble and context before settling on him. "All right?" she asked, taking a step back towards him and searching his face worriedly.   


He nodded quickly in answer. _Nothing's wrong. I just need to tell you, right now, that_ _I love you, Buffy Summers._ He could ask her to get the pen out of her bag. Write it in the dark on a notepad held to the pavement by one paw. No. Stupid idea. They'd be home in no time, where he could write it clearly, hope to show her the sincerity in his eyes as she read it. He shook his head at her; _nevermind._   


"Spike," she said quietly, looking down at the sidewalk and taking her lip in her teeth for a moment before she turned back to his face. "You know I never meant to- to purchase _ you _ , don't you? I was only trying to buy your freedom."

_ Yes, you daft thing.  _ He sat down, making it easier to look up at her face, and gave her a gentle, teasing smile.

She smiled back softly, still carrying that edge of sadness. "And we  _ will _ fix you, I promise."

He snorted quietly, showing his disdain for any idea that he might have been worried, and let his eyes say it silently.  _ I know. And I love you. _ Could sit here all night if she was going to keep looking at him like this, her sadness slowly giving way to a renewed sense of hopeful calm, smile becoming gently fond in that way he kept refusing to analyse.   


"Good," she murmured, reading his easy confidence, at least. Then she swept a hand around the base of his ear to cup it in her palm, leaned over, and pressed a tender little kiss to his forehead.


	25. Ask for me tomorrow

Buffy kissed him, and the whole world stopped.

Or so it felt. Later, he would realise it had only been his heart. Sound, sight, scent, and sensation vanished for the blink-space before the missing beat, then returned without it, only they were wrong and confusing and variantly too sharp and too dull.   


Everything was still, too  _ still _ in the muffled air _.  _ He snatched in a breath, nose-throat-lungs-chest all as frighteningly wrong and confusing as his senses, but no- familiar, only forgotten, and  _ holy fucking shit _ he was human-shaped again. And panting shallowly and sitting awkwardly and oh thank fuck his legs were issuing mild complaints about being bent like this which meant they could feel and move him out of it and oh god Buffy-

Buffy had taken a step back, two, or he had somehow shifted, but he thought it was her, for she was staring down at him in horror, one hand held to her mouth.   


Her mouth that she had kissed him with. And thereby broken the spell.   


Bleeding bloody obvious now. Only the princess's kiss could possibly have done it. The slayer's. Ha. How else should one die in a fairy-tale? This story was a tragedy indeed, revealed in the last act. _ Lips, oh you the doors of breath…  _ "Seal with a righteous kiss, a dateless bargain to engrossing death," he finished aloud in a hoarse, scratchy whisper he hardly recognised as his own. The words weren't; any of his all scrambled and slithering.   


"Spike," she whispered back, as though placing him suddenly, her voice too soft and muted through deadened ears.

He made himself stand, pushing up on shaky legs that seemed to know the motion even if he didn’t. Fabric shifted, leather, someone else's skin on someone else's skin. Coat. Coat that wasn't his coat, night air touching bare skin on his cheeks. "Thou hast killed me," he muttered at her, all aswirl with icy loss and her horrified eyes and still grasping at snatches of god-knew-what to make sense of anything.  _ You did this; do not accuse me so. _

"I loved you," she gasped.

Oh, the scathing irony. She had, of course she had, the verb put to it now; loved him with her hands and eyes and silent lips while they'd imagined withholding a term for it could change things. Loved him with a heart fierce enough to incinerate any mere storybook spell. Love- **_ d _ ** _. _ Tense.

"What the fuck did you do that for?" he snarled bitterly, and this was more familiar, more like both of his voices.   


"I'm sorry," she whispered, tears gushing up in her eyes.   


Forced himself to take a step back, two; god, she was so  _ short. _ Tiny, now that she wasn't towering over him. Open-hearted vulnerability overrunning her eyes to shimmer on her cheeks, and he was so very tall and high above the ground and, most of all, the source of all that anguish on her face. His deadened senses focused themselves at that which they were now made for; the sound of her thundering heartbeat, the scent of her more-than-human blood, the direction she might take to flee in. Hunger roared in his belly, and he clenched his jaws together, willing away the further change of fangs erupting before he'd got a handle on one new set of teeth. What the hell had he been thinking. What the hell had she?   


"So am I," he said quietly. "So am I." Then he stopped trying to think, and ran. 

  
  


The tingle of Spike’s presence was reaching the far edge of her senses before she could make her tongue unstick to call out to him. "Spike! Wait!"

He didn't stop, and a second later the darkness had swallowed him.   


_ Shit. _ Perhaps she should have tried to tackle him when she first twigged that he was about to bolt, but then what? She could hardly have wrestled him to the ground and sat on him until he got a grip; one did not throw oneself on a panicky vampire that neared one's own strength and expect to restrain them safely and easily. And that 'until'... all the blind hunger of the newly-risen had been on his face. Mix it with enough shock and panic, and the only 'getting a grip' might have been on her neck. The question was moot, in any case; she'd been too shocked herself to react in any way appropriately. Too flooded, too frozen by emotion and instinct to reach for him as she should have, with sheltering fingers and soothing sounds. Too afraid of somehow killing him more by touching him again. Too uncertain of whether any move from her would be welcome, given the accusation in his eyes.   


And now he was… out there somewhere. Alone and shaken and hungry. The strange man-thing that had been inside her wolf. Part of her rebelled against the idea that she knew anything of him, felt anything for him at all; wanted to hate this thing that had stolen him away. But the rest… the rest was just a big ugly knot of pained worry.   


_ God, please don't hurt anyone. Spurn me if you must, scorn what we had, but don't make me have to hurt you.   
_

She needed to find him. At least  _ try _ to calm him down enough for him to make decisions with more than his raw newly-returned vampireness. Why was she still standing here? Blowing a short breath out through her nose, she shook herself and ran after him.

  
  


Running on two legs was slow, inefficient, and incredibly unstable. It was a truly ridiculous way for a creature to convey itself. Somewhere across town he gave it up, slowing to a walk, then ducking into the recessed doorway of a boarded-up warehouse, where he could sit down with his back to the corner and pull his (leather) coat in around himself. No breath to catch, but he was panting anyway until he caught himself and consciously forced his lungs to slow down. The ground, air, felt chilly through his clothing, leeching warmth from his body and making him want to curl around what was left of it. Pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them there with shaky hands, knowing it wasn't any true reaction to the cold itself, but to the all of it.  _ Vampire _ . Vampire, vampire, vampire. What did that even mean?   


Felt new-old strength lurking in his limbs, strength of cold steel and red hydraulics, crouched to wait in deadly stillness now that the shaking was leaving. Hunger gnashing and gnawing in his stomach, demanding its surcease; hunger that had been hibernating and somehow healing him as it did, now clambering up to his watering mouth at the first hint of a meal. There was food out there, everywhere, back on some of those streets he'd passed. People he could prowl after, plunge  _ sharp _ fangs into and drink deep.   


His fingers clenched on his knees, and he remembered that he had them. Fingers. Hands. Let go, turned them over to study, front and back. Useful things, hands. For handling _. _ A high, breathy cackle of demented laughter clawed from him, before he cut it off with a sniff. Right. Calm. What was next?

_ Don't think about Buffy.  _ She'd called something out, as he'd bolted, but he was no longer hers and never bound. Except for by their truce, but that was a wobbly thing and neither here nor there, really, because he was… he was a vampire, and thus did not play by anyone's rules, or give a care for obligations, and it was all coming back now, how to do this shit.   


She'd get over it. Mourn her dearly departed canine. They were never meant to be. Had fallen into a few days of glorious deviation, but that was over, and he was not her wolf, and best he leave it at that and not make it any harder on them both by trying to go back just to make farewells. Not after running off on her like a right shameful git.   


Couldn’t crawl back needing her now. Not when she'd done everything to set him free in his own body, and now he was, and could bloody well take care of himself and let her get on.

Food. Needed  _ food _ before he could begin to think consistently. One unlucky bastard's death wouldn't matter, anyway; he'd sniffed out enough extra vampires for her to balance off a quick meal before he left town.   


Stretching, exploring out the movement of his body again, he got back to his feet. Boots, jeans, t-shirt, coat. Checked pockets; found his lighter.  _ And where the fuck were you these two years? _ He shrugged. It never did to probe magic too deeply. Oh hell, he needed a smoke. 

  
  


Found a vamp first -  _ another  _ vampire, he supposed it was now - sitting on a bench at a bus stop.   


"Think you've missed the last one," Spike told him idly as he came up, feeling out the usage of his casual voice, the effect of his easy walk.

"Not waiting for a bus," the vampire snickered, at him, as if he was thick. The guy felt young, weak, and fuck if he didn’t smell like blood somewhere in there.   


"You got a smoke?" Spike asked him, ignoring the insult, undecided where he wanted to take this. Stopped in front of the guy's seat, enjoyed a moment's satisfaction in standing over someone for a change.   


"Uhh… yeah, I guess," he said, confidence faltering slightly. Dipped his hand into his shirt pocket, pulled out a pack and passed one over.   


"Ta." Spike shifted his weight back a little, easing off the confrontational pressure; set the cigarette between his (small, nimble) lips and grated his zippo to life. Drew in a deep breath of hot nicotine smoke and cool night air, held it there, blew it out slowly. Fuck, this was the shit. "So, what  _ are _ you up to?" he asked, making himself sound more amiable. "Since you're not waiting for a non-existent bus."

The guy shrugged, grimaced. "Dunno. Heard this was the place to be; hellmouth, you know? But there don't seem to be much going on."

Ah. New tourist. Christ, this was the sort of wanker was supposed to be his compeer? His coevil, if he wanted it.   


"Picked up dinner at this grungy little teenie-bopper dance club, then thought I'd see what other attractions there were out here. The place is effing quiet, though." He looked around, then up at Spike warily. "You know the local gangs?"   


_Ha. There are no 'local gangs', you bloody tosser. Took care of them all, me and…_ Sigh. "Who'd you have for dinner?" Spike asked cooly. Couldn’t have been one of her mates. Watcher was seeing them home, not out on the town. And they were smarter than that, to be still alive.   


"' _ Who' _ ?" he asked, that tone of disparagement back. "Don't need to know their  _ names. _ " He laughed, jeering and patronising, guffawing at his own hilarity.   


And Spike had suddenly had enough. Letting muscle memory direct, he curled his new fingers into a fist and smashed the guy square in his ugly, laughing mouth.

The punch bowled him from the bench to sprawl out on the sidewalk, blood swelling up on his lips. "What the fuck was that for?" he yabbered in protest, frightened now, but still surly.

Spike stepped over him, planting a boot either side of his hips, then bent down to grab him by the lapels of his stupid jacket. "Names," he growled down at the arsehole's face, "fucking  _ matter. _ Mine's Spike." He knew that much.   


"Spike," the guy affirmed, well flustered now. "I- I'm-"

"Yours doesn't," he snapped, cutting him off. Then because the scent and sight of all that stolen elixir was right there, and this punching-thing was rusty and unsatisfactory, he grabbed a handful of the vampire's short hair, wrenched his head over, and sank his fangs into his neck, worrying at it like he still had a muzzle.   


It was miserable. Blood seeping reluctantly instead of pumping, thinned and mostly lifeless, cold. But it was better than nothing, and he was fucking  _ starving _ . The vampire might have screamed and sworn, and definitely thrashed about beneath him, which felt good and right even if the rest of it was all wrong. Both made no difference; he was going nowhere, Spike’s wondrous new hands holding his head and chest down with ease.   


A fist slammed into his waist, hitting blindly, and Spike caught the arm with his freest hand, dropped a knee onto it to brace it, then snapped the bone back with a crunch. The vampire screeched, then finally comprehended the position it was in and became meekly, submissively still. Probably thought he'd let him go once he'd asserted himself adequately. Ha.   


Blood stopped rising to the pull of his mouth, and he spat out the cold, empty flesh, disgusted with himself. Dropped the broken arm to fish into the guy's front pocket, retrieved the pack of smokes there and shoved them into his own. "Don't fucking move," he growled at him. "Got it?"

The vampire gave him a hasty, terrified nod.

Spike pushed off him and back to his feet, looked around, then strode over to the nearest wooden fence and wrenched one of the pickets from it. Four steps back to the vampire, who looked torn between obeying or trying to flee; Spike didn’t give him the chance to pick the smarter option. Slammed the picket into his chest, jerked it back out, and watched the scene turn to dust. Except for the distaste in his mouth, and the scrape on his knuckles, and the lingering sense of vile revulsion for it all.   


He leaned the picket back against the fence, case someone wanted to repair it. Shouldn't make a mess in her town.  _ Fuck. _   


The blood had helped, loathsome and meagre though it was. Soothed the gnashing roar to an ill-tempered loud grumble of complaint. Needed to sit down somewhere, be somewhere that wasn't standing awkwardly on the sidewalk at a loss for what he was doing. And not on that recently vacated bench seat.   


There was a cemetery a block or so away, if he had his bearings right. Which was debatable. Seemed like the place a vampire should be. Yeah. He would go there.

  
  


Buffy doubted she'd find him near the busy Friday-night atmosphere of the Bronze, all of it clamouring with noise and light; he'd looked more ready to bolt for some quiet, dark shelter. But at this hour, the Bronze was also the only place with a reliable supply of living human bodies, and he had also looked  _ hungry. _ The factory had been a bust, walking the streets calling him seemed counterproductive when he'd already fled from her, and he was (god, she hoped) sensible enough to avoid going anywhere near campus or the caves beyond it.   


_ Where the hell are you, Spike?  _ Sunnydale had never felt so big, or so lonely. She could call the others out to help; ask Willow to run a locating spell. But if he didn’t want to be found… She could hardly forcibly capture him, sit him down and demand that he… that he  _ what? _ Be a wolf again?  _ Face it. You should have expected this. _ The fairy-tale was entirely over and this was the cold reality she'd refused to examine, where vampires acted like vampires and didn’t need cuddles anymore.   


She was crying again, stupid stinging drips of salt burning in her eyes. Wiping them on the back of her wrist hastily, she sniffed a few times to wrestle everything under control before approaching the door of the Bronze.

There were no vampires in the place; that much only took a cursory walk through to establish. And the evening was winding down, dance floor emptying and drinks being knocked back as closing time neared. She claimed a vacant table, dropped her head into her hands, and tried to think.  _ Where would you go, Spike? _ Her house, if he were still… It was worth checking. Willy's. The factory, again. He must know his car was there. Had she told him? Why the hell hadn't they discussed any of this?  _ Because we didn't want to.   
_

House, factory, Willy's. That was three places. She stood up again. Walking was better than sitting here doing nothing, anyway. 

  
  


The cemetery was cold and empty. Everything was cold and empty. Trying to explore his insides, self, for any sign of things missing and lost with his fur was a fruitless endeavour. Must have been right; he'd been himself, and he was still himself. The things missing were only those physical features he'd become accustomed too. And. She didn't fit under 'only'. She fitted under 'don't torture yourself by thinking of her'. She was the hollow in him bigger than hunger and harder to fill. The hunger was just a needed distraction from it.

Fuck, he was such an arsehole. If he'd any chance, any possible shot at clinging to a corner of her good graces, he'd fucked it over bloody royally the second he'd had the opportunity to. Girl names the way she'd felt about him with fur on and what does Spike fucking say? Not,  _ I loved you too, and I still do. _ Not,  _ I'm still the same inside, and I will prove it. _ Not even a rude bloody,  _ Thank you.  _ No, he had to go and snarl,  _ What the fuck did you do that for?  _ Wasn't sure whether he'd meant it more for breaking the spell or for loving him. Either one worked. But they ought to be mutually exclusive, and she'd done both. And now - now he'd thrown it back at her with vitriol enough to eat through any remaining thread of hope between them. What the fuck did  _ he  _ do that for?   


Followed by seconding her,  _ sorry _ . At least he'd got that bit of honesty in.  _ Sorry I couldn't stay that lovable shape. Sorry you can't still. Sorry I broke your heart, and just compounded it. _   


He wanted to howl about it. Sing his mournful cries to indifferent skies. But he'd lost the right voice for it, traded it for this lump in his throat and harsh words echoing in his brain. Traded it for this body that kept reminding him what blood was to feed upon, how easily it could be obtained. It was what he was now. She'd seen it, had recoiled in horror from it. Stupid to have thought he could thwart nature with willpower. Everyone had their role in life, and the big bad never won the heroine at the end of the story. Nor took off his wolf's coat and became a sheep.   


Accept it. Move on. Hell, get drunk, get fed (find more smokes, because he was almost out again), steal a car battery and try to get the thing started. Get out of town, and then… write to her. Like he'd avoided all week. Only not, because all he'd been thinking then was how much he loved her. These new eyes saw more clearly, and what they saw was the improbability of it all. 

  
  


A shabby motel on the outskirts of town promised easy pickings. There were no threshold barriers, for one. People here were less noticed and less noticing, for another. He could prowl along the row of doors like lucky dips, listening and scenting until he found just the right sound-asleep solo occupant.

He did.   


More at home with these limbs again, comfortable in motion, able to fall silent on a dime to listen. His mark at the end of the row, only one neighbouring room, and that unoccupied. In this one, someone snoring fit to be murdered for. Bed maybe in the middle of the small room, few yards inside the door. Couldn’t have wished for a simpler arrangement.   


Night was running out on him, after all that time blown sniffling in the graveyard. Telling himself to check she was home safe, telling himself to leave her be, telling and telling himself she wouldn't be worrying about him. He was a vampire now. She knew that. Time to prove it. Get this done and back to the factory before dawn. Hole up there for the day, blow this town when darkness returned.

Hand to the doorknob, turn it gently, getting ready to barge the door in with the sort of short-lived bang that didn't tend to attract curious parties, the sound too brief to be sure of. But there wouldn't even be that, because this idiot, oh, he hadn't even locked his damn door. It was too bloody easy.

Spike eased it open, slipped inside, and pressed it softly closed behind him; the snoring continued unabated all the while. Grinned around his fangs as they descended, and crept up to the bed.   


The man lay on his back, dead to the world and soon to be. Had that rumpled, stubbly look of someone down in their doldrums, no one to brush up for, uncaring this night for presentation or basic safety. Taunting fate, and now it had responded in the shape of this prowling nightmare. Providential, really, all of this. Laid out as if it was meant to be. Easy, so easy to go with the flow and do what was expected. No one could blame him.  _ She _ couldn't blame him; imagining him into something he wasn't didn't mean he had to be that.   


The man stirred, startled awake, some instinct belatedly kicking in to warn him that death hovered above his bed and he really should have locked the door, shouldn't he? Stupid fucker. Spike had a palm over his mouth and a hand around his throat before he could make a sound, tightening both when the scream came, strangling it away entirely from its initial muffled, muted sound of terror. Screaming made it easy. Urged him to silence it. It was a prey sound, a stampeding-blood sound, a sound that said strike and bite and turn all into a red-wet mess of torn things and choking gasps.   


He didn't want the man to scream.   


Didn’t want to attract attention, but more… didn't want to be driven by it. He'd loosened his grip on the man's throat again, anticipated another attempt coming from it, and thought,  _ I will not be enslaved by this. _ He was himself, and more than hunger, and more than vampiric instinct, and he was  _ choosing  _ this, not being forced into it. Choosing it because… because she would never love  _ him, _ and because he was  _ good _ at being a vampire, dammit, and because everything was truly fucked now so what was the bloody point of trying to do otherwise, it was already decided and done, he was a vampire and he'd never hidden it and this was what vampires did.

_ Just don't bite anyone. Anything else, we can argue out.   
_

He froze. No. It wasn't decided and done. He was about to make it be so, the second he tore through her single prohibition, through her one rule, through this hot throbbing flesh under his hand. He was  _ about  _ to choose. Something, or something else.   


"You make a fucking sound and I'll kill you," he growled down at the man's face, glaring yellow-eyed into his terrified white-rimmed ones.   


Thought he saw some degree of helpless agreement there; gave the guy a final hard look of warning, then pulled away, letting go and sitting down on the side of the bed. Dropped his elbows onto his knees and his face into his hands, blocking out the shitty motel room. "Don't think about trying to go anywhere, either," he muttered. "Need to fucking think for a moment."   


Everything had been spiralling too fast, barrelling him down the tracks on this handcart he wasn't sure he'd meant to board, pointed unavoidably at the one-way door now staring him in the face after his last-second yank of the emergency brakes. The door that said,  _ Buffy’s enemies. _ Had thought it was already behind him in the fog, but no, here it was, a crystal clear dividing line yet to be crossed. He could go forward, or he could step off the tracks here. Try to find his way back up them on foot. Back to where he'd run from her. If he wanted.   


Never let him be said to have chosen the ease of conformity over the freedom of anarchic rebellion. She'd told him to make his own choices, and he was damn well choosing her, whatever that meant.   


"What's your name?" he asked the snivelling man lying petrified in bed behind him.

"M-Martin," he whimpered out.

Spike stood up, turned to face him. "Came here to kill you," he told him idly. "But I think I might've changed my mind. So tell me, what the fuck are you doing sleeping in a Sunnydale motel room with the door unlocked,  _ M-Martin?" _   


"M-my w-wife," he stammered. "Threw me out."

Spike snickered humourlessly. "Good for her." Glanced around the room, all of it miserable by eye and worse by nose; mildewy, stale, and depressing. Would only have been improved by a body. They'd probably have changed the sheets then. He turned back to Martin. "There's people out there who work their bloody asses off trying to keep useless wankers like  _ you _ safe from creatures like  _ me _ , Martin. Ought to kill you just for the lack of fucking consideration. Lock the damn door." He pointed a finger at the wanker, enjoying the flimsy feeling of control, then turned his back on him and strode from the room, leaving the door open behind him.

Halfway across the parking lot it was still open, so he turned back and shouted, "Now, Martin!"   


Scrambling hands and feet scurried; the door closed and locked.   


_ Fucking useless.  _ Didn’t know if this made the whole visit a good deed or a bad one or maybe just neutral. But he hadn't crossed that final line. They could argue the rest out. He hoped.

  
  


Spike was nowhere. Or nowhere he would let himself be found. Drained by hours of jumping at noises and barks and one flash of white fur that had turned out to be a cat, she surrendered to the futility of walking any further and turned for home again. He wasn't there either, of course.   


She left the lights off, their promised garish glare too harsh after dark streets and too certain to show details she didn't want to see; his water bowl in the kitchen, the fur all over her blankets. Took off her boots and climbed into bed as she was, squirming down into a tight ball, involuntarily reminding herself of the way he'd curled up at night until joining her here.   


She'd better ring everyone in the morning. Later in the morning. Let them know they could cancel the second despelling attempt.  _ Much _ later in the morning. Maybe she could just ring Giles and ask him to pass it on.   


She should probably cry some more. Do it properly, sobbing into her pillow. It was supposed to be good for you, wasn't it? Felt sure they'd said so on TV at some point. The TV people, in TV land. She couldn't muster the energy to try it. Everything was just this desolate greyness that somehow managed to be both numb and achingly raw. Grey like her room in this weak non-light. Besides, it would have been too much like formally giving up.

  
  


She was staring up at the greyish ceiling when the first faint tingle brushed her senses, the sensation too subtle to really be there. Her heart leapt anyway, traitorous thing, senses sharpening the way he… the way he _used_ _to_ prick up his ears.   


The tingle grew. She lay there breathing softly, eyes closed to feel out more effectively, willing herself not to react at what was most likely a flight of fancy. Or a random vampire, crawling past her house slowly on its way home before the very imminent dawn. Only when she was finally, nervously certain did she get up and tiptoe downstairs.   


She'd had the back porch in mind, after all the time they'd spent there, but from the foot of the stairs, it was the front door that tugged at her. Opening it softly, like he might spook at the sound, or simply evaporate, she stepped out onto the doormat and turned her eyes slowly to the right.   


Spike sat in the far corner of the porch, tucked in where the coming sun wouldn't reach him directly. His knees were pulled up, making him a small, shadowy splodge of mostly black, the contours of his new limbs obscured by darkness and leather. His hair still shone in the dark, though. And his eyes were still the same, if rimmed by reddened skin and damp lashes and no fur.   


"Woof," he said timorously.


	26. Of tongues and hungers

"Tell me that's not all you can say?" she asked,  _ mostly  _ stalling.   


He shook his head, eyes sliding downwards unhappily. "Felt like the safest option."

Oh, that  _ voice _ . Familiar and reassuring; panging and tugging at her suddenly achy chest. She took a step closer, another, feeling like she was creeping out onto a trembling highwire towards a highly uncertain landing platform. "Are you okay?" she asked quietly, and there were a thousand questions inside it.   


Eyes filled with a quivering uncertainty and white-knuckle forced hope jumped back to hers. "I didn't bite anyone," he said quickly. "Any humans. That means it's okay, right? I know it's not, not with what I… but I remembered what you said. Didn’t eat anyone." A note of desperate imploring slid into his voice at the end, begging her to hear the words.

Part of the tight fist in her chest let go in a flood of relief, the fear it had been made of only identifiable now in absence. She padded across the rest of the porch and squatted down in front of him, arms folded over herself to hold everything together and inside. "Are you okay?" she asked again, softer, her eyes searching his.  _ What do you need right now, Spike? _

He watched her in return, gradually becoming calmer. "Yeah," he murmured. "Sorry I… well, everything. Sorta panicked a little. Didn’t mean to… any of that." He gave her a wobbly little grimace of a smile.   


"Kinda startled me too," she whispered. He was becoming less strange the longer she looked at him, older memories of those cut-glass cheekbones and that plush bottom lip merging slowly with the lost face she'd come to know so well; stitching together from the familiar touchstones of his worried blue-grey eyes and that questioning little tilt to his head. And he was still filled with that same timid, cautious longing she had ordered herself not to attribute to anything but wolfishness. She unfolded one of her hands and reached for him slowly, but his big pointy ears and his lovely ruff were gone and she didn't know where or how to touch him anymore; after a moment's confused dithering, her fingers lighted on cool black leather over one of his knees.   


Moving with his own tentative confusion, he brought a hand up and settled his fingers over hers.   


He had hands.  _ Well of course he has hands, genius. _ And presumably everything else he ought to. And no extras, like a fluffy white tail hiding somewhere under his coat. She felt an urge to inspect him carefully, to map out his new-old body from head to toe and assure herself everything was correct. Locate again the muscles and bones her fingers had known and learn the new feel and shape of each. Heat rose in her cheeks with the image of her fingertips on the naked skin of his flank, and she dropped her eyes quickly to hide them. "Handy," she joked in diversion, lifting her thumb to stroke the side of his.

He snorted quietly, the same hushed laugh she'd heard so often this week, and murmured with a hint of wry amusement, "That's what I thought."

The highwire felt like it was stabilising under her feet, enough to make it back along. "Come inside?" she asked.   


He looked at the door, then back to her. "Sure you want to be inviting me in?" he asked.

"I just did," she told him. "So will you?"

"Yes," he breathed.

She stood up, keeping her fingers curled around his, and led him back inside. 

  
  


He was standing in Buffy’s bedroom again. She was all welcomes with her words and actions, but there was a hard reticence to her that hadn't existed when he was furry. He was on the outside again; not physically, but where it really mattered. In her trust. Didn’t know if there was a way back into it, back towards any of what they'd had, but there had to be, she had to still have some smidgen of hope in him, or why bring him in here? He'd hurt her, and he'd done it at the worst possible moment, and maybe this was all he could expect anyway, given what they each were. But she had opened a door, so he was damn well going to  _ try. _   


Didn’t feel right to go and sit on her bed, yet he didn't want to keep standing here all overbearing-like and lurky when she still looked so short and he felt dizzyingly tall. Especially when she'd spent the last few days crouching down to his level to talk to him. Even more especially when she smelt-sounded-tasted-on-the-air like sodding ambrosia, and drooling desperately towards her neck was the very last way he was going to help himself.   


He sat down on the folded blanket that was still arranged into a wolf bed against one wall, glad to find it still there waiting. Even if only because she hadn't had time to remove it.   


"You can have a proper seat," she said, frowning and indicating the options.

He shook his head. "This is good."   


She sat down slowly on the edge of her bed, facing him.

_ Talk, dammit.  _ Stupid to be so lost for words when he finally had the ability to speak them. Stupid to sound reserved himself while hoping to relax it in her. "Been feeling too tall," he admitted. "Like I'm walking around on stilts. Somehow seems more peculiar than going the other way did."

"You're really not that tall," she told him, a note of bantering tease seeping in, but in a way that was almost affectionate. Or he was grasping at straws. "You're…" she flicked her eyes over him and back, "Spike-sized. Like you've only changed in shape." She pressed her lips together quickly, spotting the unintended double meaning in her words. "And I guess it makes sense," she jumped on, talking fast in redirection. "I could run around on my hands and feet - it'd be inefficient, sure, but not unstable - but I've never seen a dog running on its hind legs. It's got to be weirder to lose feet than to gain them." She snapped into awkward silence again.   


"Everyone crawls before they walk," he scraped together. "The stability thing." Hell, this was all stalling. Both of them trying to cling onto a state of uncomfortable abeyance because they didn't know what would be next. Or he was, anyway. Wasn't being at all fair on her - hadn't all night - and, fuck, he had some bloody impertinence to be looking for a path back into her trust when he wasn't showing her any.   


"Ran for awhile," he started. "Stopped, tried to work out what the fuck I was and what I was going to do next." Shook his head. "Got all the answers wonky, of course. Working from assumptions…" Forget that. Get to the parts that were either going to get him thrown out on his ear, or to a meeting with one of her pointy implements, or to where she was still listening and he could try to explain. "Anyway. Set out again. Met a- another vampire. Lost my shit briefly."   


Buffy moved to say something, but he raised his hand in a staying motion.   


"Just- listen. Please?" he asked hoarsely.   


She smoothed her lips over and settled back again.   


"Staked him. Went looking for someone worth eating. Snuck into this guy's motel room…" Tempting to try and point the blame at bloody Martin for his idiocy. But ultimately dishonest. "Had a hand on his mouth before he could try to scream," he murmured. "Other one on his throat to strangle him when he did." He watched her midsection, not wanting to see her face, drawing back that feeling of cold malevolence and letting it flavour his quiet words.  _ This is what I can be, slayer.  _ "Could have killed him without a second's thought but for how he was about to taste." Risked a quick glance up; she was watching him steadily, face closed. "But I didn't. Realised I was only doing it because I thought I had to. And that maybe… maybe I don't." The  _ maybes _ felt knee-deep; neck-deep from his position. "So I told him to lock the damn door next time, and left him to it. Came back here to find out how far you meant that 'just don't bite anyone' to go. Whether I really had bollocksed everything up irreparably or not." He sighed. "Know I shouldn't have been there at all. Broke what I'd promised."   


"Because you were angry with me?" she asked quietly.

"Why would I-" Except that yeah, he kind of had been. Felt like a lifetime ago. "No," he told her, looking up at her face. "No, luv. Would never… wasn't like that at all. Just wasn't thinking. Was trying  _ not  _ to think about you, and everything was so bloody confusing… grabbing onto an old pattern felt better than nothing. But that's not… I'm not so sure that's what I am anymore. Sorry, about what I said. Didn’t mean any of it."

"It's okay," she said quickly, shaking her head.   


"No, it's not."  _ God, take me back there to start over… Explain now then, you tosser _ . "Was a big part of me that didn't want anything to change. I know it had to, but… Anyway, shouldn’t have shot the messenger. Wasn't you I was angry with."   


She was still watching him quietly, which was better than showing him the door or flipping out a stake, but what the hell did it mean?   


_ It means she's still listening, for fuck's sake. It means after everything she's given you, she's still giving you more. And now you're scratching around in the details because you're scared of what she'll say when you offer her something back _ . "Buffy," he said, and everything suddenly became easier.  _ This _ was right, indubitably; righter than anything else he'd done or tried to do since the sun had set. "I love you. I loved you then, and I love you now, and nothing,  _ nothing _ could ever change it."

He'd imagined more than a few scenarios during the week for how she might react to those words. Anger, confusion, denial, sad acceptance (pleasure, if he was  _ really  _ fantasising). Somehow, he'd failed to predict this one; she looked  _ frightened _ . Her unblinking eyes wide on his face; all of her too still. She, who had faced down every awful thing fairyville could throw at her, was frightened by the weight of this. Guessed that made two of them.

Had he fur, he'd have moved to put his head on her lap, wagged his tail gently. But all he had was words. "I'm not asking you for anything," he murmured. "Know it's all different now. But I can help, if you'll give me a chance to. I'm still me, luv. And you've still got those soldier wankers to sort out…" He trailed off, hearing the desperation in his voice.   


"I know," she whispered, then shook her head at herself. "Spike, I… oh god, this is insane. I- think I kind of love you too." The same desperation from his voice was now in hers. She swallowed and looked down at the floor. "But I can't ask you to… not be yourself."

It took him a moment to hear the rest of her words through the all-encompassing whisper that was  _ I love you too, _ and longer again to work out what they meant. When he did he would have laughed, were he not so fucking terrified. "Buffy, christ. You've done nothing but try to let me be myself." He took a breath and leaned forward to the edge of his spot, longing to take those few steps to make physical contact with her that had been so easy yesterday. "You told me you were giving me the freedom to make my own choices," he said in reminder, his voice coming out low and determined. "That you don't enslave people for their species. So let me make mine, as myself. I bloody love you, Buffy, and if that means eating prepackaged meals out of an old pot on a back doorstep, then you know I'll be glad to. That was me, out there. And I can't remember ever feeling more content."

A nervous flicker of hope was on her face now, blending through the self-protective reserve of her that was tugging at him to protect her somehow. To shelter that sensitive, caring heart of hers. To try to comfort her for the shitty night she'd undoubtedly had, because of bloody course she would have worried about him, no matter what she thought he was doing, and the hypocrisy of doing so while he could have been off killing people would have cut her horribly.   


He got it, suddenly, what the silent parts of him were screaming, and felt stupid for having taken so long to hear it through all the words he was rambling out. Crossing the space between them, he knelt on the floor beside her legs and rested his cheek against her knee.   


Buffy smiled, exhaling a shaky laugh, and reached the fingers of one hand out tentatively to pat his hair. His hair that was bloody ridiculous right now, as long as his coat had been and equally well brushed into floofing out everywhere. But perhaps it was right like that. Because her hand was petting it smoothly now, easing into a familiar rhythm, and then she pulled her fingers back to slide off the bed and sit down on the floor beside him, her thigh touching his shin and a shy smile on her face. God, she was so brave.   


He had arms. So he put them around her at last, and she moved into them and hugged him back, and everything stopped feeling wrong and strange and scary and began to feel right.   


Or it did until his aching hunger roared back to life, slabbering and slavering inside of him. She was heat and power and immortal life, the side of her head an inch from his lips and her neck close enough to bend his mouth to. The yearning to do so twisted up in his gut, tensing his muscles against it, and he felt her stiffen in response and begin to draw back. Felt like she was going to tear his heart out to take with her.   


Hadn't wanted to bring this up; had thought it'd be admitting to a weakness that was going to drive a further wedge between them. Had thought the admission would imply a lack of self-control, when he could bloody well keep it under wraps and his teeth to himself no matter how tempting she might smell; she wasn't sodding dinner. But here it was, pushing her away anyway because she knew there was something wrong, course she bloody did, and it was nothing but deceit to pretend otherwise. How many times did he have to spite himself before he could learn to show her a little faith?  _ You fucking idiot. _   


"Buffy," he said, pulling back himself until they were facing each other, "I'm so fucking starving right now I can hardly think straight, and I should have told you back on the doorstep instead of letting you get the wrong idea, but I didn’t because I'm an idiot and there's probably plenty of real dogs out there with more brains than I've got-" He snatched in a breath, stilling the rush of words. Slowed his voice down to the deadly serious thing he meant it to be, strong and secure, to show her that he had this. "I will  _ never _ hurt you. Notion I could's making me wired, is all. But I swear, that's all it is. It doesn't own me."

He caught a flicker of both guilt and irritation in the shrewdly assessing look her eyes took on at his words, and for the hundredth time in the past few hours wanted to slap himself over the head. Or maybe put it through a brick wall. How many goddamn times had she asked him what he needed?   


"I need food," he told her in a rush, and it felt like letting himself fall down and all apart at her feet and landing on a blanket that had always been there waiting. "Blood. Whatever wolf food's lickable in the fridge."

"There's  _ blood _ in the fridge," she told him, a shy smile slowly spreading on her face. "I bought some yesterday in case… you needed it."

The landing-feeling swooped around him, and he dropped his forehead to rest against her knee, closing his eyes. "Thank you. Buffy, I…" Fuck, he was crying again, salty water slipping through his closed eyelids. He was doing a pitiful bloody job at sounding together and determined, and a worse one at comforting her like he'd meant to when he moved across the room. But she was stroking him again, a hand gliding over his back, and her cheek was resting against his fur. Hair. She'd never needed him to have his shit together and be all stoic, dammit. She'd just needed him to be honest, so that she could too.

"Shh," she murmured. "Let's go and warm some up, okay?" Her voice coaxed gently, as if he were some skittish wild thing that wanted careful handling. Would once have made him bristle up in defence, protest his untamable viciousness, but he knew better now, knew this was safe to sink into. Or didn't care if it wasn't, because this was worth any punishment the fates wanted to mete out to a vampire who bowed his head to the slayer.   


"Yeah," he murmured back. "Let's do that." 

  
  


Spike followed on her heels like a nervous puppy, the vibrating zing of  _ hungry vampire  _ down her spine further agitating the flock of butterflies that were fluttering about in her stomach. She wanted to shout something exuberant with vindication, yell out to the world (and the anxious Buffy she'd been last night) that she had  _ known  _ this was just as much him as all his snarls and growls were. She wanted to bolt, flee, run for the hills in terrified silence, because nothing about this made sense, he should have been a vampire who turned  _ into _ her dog and not the other way around, and surely there was some rule of the universe that said a vampire could not possibly fall in love with the slayer and how could he mean it and what on earth was she thinking loving him back? But he did mean it. She could not any longer ignore the way he looked at her. The way he'd been looking at her for a while now. As though he would run to the ends of this great big earth for her if she only asked, and kill anything that got in the way. And she hadn't been thinking anything to love him back. She had just looked into that heart shining in his eyes, and hers had roared in answer. Which was the scariest part. Her heart had never felt like this.  _ She _ had never felt like this. She'd once thought something achy and squeezing was the thing called  _ love,  _ and had described it so, but this vast roar of unrestrictable emotion felt like it would burn the fetters of anything that attempted to constrain it.

So she didn't shout, and she didn't bolt, and she carried the tingly butterflies downstairs in their thin glass cage with her not-wolf close behind her.

He took the jar of blood from her hands as soon as she'd pulled it from the fridge, tugged the cap off, and drank it cold like he'd been wandering the desert for forty years and had finally found water. Or like he was a vampire who hadn't eaten in two.   


She reached back into the fridge for a second jar and carried it over to the microwave.  _ Probably  _ should have mentioned that there was food available when she'd first brought him inside. Except that in this guise he'd always looked at her hungrily, and everything else had been pressing, and he'd claimed not to have eaten anyone overnight so she'd thought her earlier assessment must have been wrong, and so she'd left it unspoken. And he, frustrating creature that he was, hadn't said anything either. Until he had. He who had so stubbornly refused to ever admit to needing anything from her. And he didn't need  _ this; _ he'd made that more than clear with his little big scary vampire intruder story. Which meant that he  _ wanted _ it. Which was kind of more than a little terrifying and she didn't know which  _ what if _ … to ask herself first.   


The microwave dinged, shaking her back to the here and now. She took out the blood, looking around for something to stir it with, scrabbling to think what that something might be. She didn't even know how warm it should be. Angel had always been so stoic about it, preferring to wait until she had left before he ate, ashamed and afraid of what might happen if he gave in to his hunger around her. Afraid of somehow losing control. Almost as if he'd somehow known, intuited, that she could break Angelus's chain if he got too close.  _ That's me, trigger-happy curse breaker. Able to turn angels and canines into demons with just the right touch…   
_

Spike shifted slightly, leather and fabric making a tiny unfamiliar rustling sound.

She turned around quickly, wondering how long she'd been staring into the bench. "Do you want it, like, tea temperature? Or body temp?" Like a body. Ha. She'd never thought of it that way.  _ Don't start rambling.   
_

"It's warm enough," he said, a little awkwardly.   


Right, yes. She'd been dithering around with it, doing nothing, for who knew how long, while he was hungry enough to gulp it down cold. She passed it to him.   


He drank it more slowly, but still in one long chug, and she watched the way his muscles moved as he swallowed. The relief on his very human face.   


"Where are your fangs?" she asked, her tone almost suspicious, because this was another degree of unexpected and she wanted him to start making more sense somehow, except not by acting like a proper vampire, but… she didn't know how much more strangeness she could handle with her composure at all extant. "You still have them, right?"   


"Where… course I've got fangs," he said, frowning. "Vampires generally do, or so I hear." He stood the empty jar next to the other one.

"Then where are they?" She could hear the tight little tone of accusation in her voice but couldn't help it, strung out suddenly by the long night and too many worries and now him somehow hiding his fangs or only pretending to have them and…   


With a soft crunch of shifting cartilage, he vamped out, watching her with equal suspicion, then pulled his lips back to flash the promised fangs at her.   


"Oh," she said, feeling the rushing tightness whoosh out of her again. "Sorry, I just…" She shook her head. "I sort of thought you had to vamp out to eat."

"Because Angel always did?" he asked sourly.

"Yes," she said, frowning sourness right back, because god, he was going to get all shitty about any comparison, wasn't he, and she couldn’t help it if she didn't have any other examples to try to predict his new biology from. "My grand reference pool of one. I know you two are nothing alike, but I'm not exactly the world's expert on vampire habits."

The sourness faded, his yellow eyes gentling, if not quite relaxing. "Sure you are," he said, lip lifting in a hesitant smile. "On the non-vamp side of the fence, anyway." He looked down at the floor for a moment before raising his eyes to hers again. "I'll never be him," he said, quiet and trepidatious.   


"I know," she murmured. "Or I wouldn't have chosen you." That unsettling thought was hovering on the edge of her mind again; the inkling that maybe she had chosen him more because of how she felt about him than because it was the right thing to do by everyone and for the world. But the second reason was correct, so she didn't need to ask herself whether it had been her real one at the time.

"Guess so," he said softly, a look that approached wonderment kindling in his eyes. He smiled, glancing down again, and any lingering strangeness fled.

"Your mouth looks more familiar when you do that," she told him fondly. "All grinny and fangy. Not that you're not pretty the other way too-"  _ pretty, Buffy?  _ "But it's a little like a middle ground. Connecting the dots. Fuck. Ignore me, I'm just… this is weird, okay?" She swallowed hard, silencing her uncouth tongue. "Have you had enough?" She waved at the empty jars.

His face flickered through several expressions as he chased her rambling, then he followed her hand to look over at the containers. "Yeah. Thanks." He tilted his head slightly. "You saying you want me to keep the bumpies on?" he asked uncertainly.   


"No! You don't have to-"  _ Slow down.  _ She took a breath, started over. "Just be you, any-faced you, and forgive me if I keep staring while I adjust. And you are kind of tall," she said apologetically. He was, now that they were standing here with only the width of floor between the island and bench between them. Tall and not-long and smelling different but in a way that was distantly familiar.   


He took a step forward and crouched down, looking up at her from thigh-level while she leant against the bench. "Better?" he asked, a note of not-quite-comfortable gentle tease in it.

She shook her head. "Stand up," she murmured, taking his hand to encourage him to.   


He did, and now he was standing very close to her, and his fangs had slipped away again to leave his vulnerable blue-grey eyes watching her nervously. She wanted to put her arms around him again, because he wasn't strange now, just a little lost and uncertain and she was too.

"Can I hug you now?" he whispered.   


She nodded quickly and pulled him to her, or he pulled her to him, or both, but either way she was pressed up against him and holding him and being held and it felt okay again. More than okay. Like all of the uncertainty was being squished out from between them because there was no room for it anymore. She hugged him harder, the firm, cool planes of his body feeling more than right where they fitted against her.

"I had a dream the other night," he murmured into the back of her hair quietly, "that you made this body become real to me with your hands. I think it's happening."

She let out a shaky breath of a laugh, because it made a peculiar kind of sense to the way she felt. He was so  _ cold _ though, where he'd always been so deliciously warm, and it sunk down sadly in her stomach, knocking through the butterflies. "I'm sorry for killing you," she whispered.   


"No, don't be that," he murmured, a groan of denial wrapped up in it. "Dunno the all of what I might've said, but god, luv, I didn't mean any of it. Just took me by surprise, is all, and then you were so horrified by me-"

"I wasn't horrified by you," she said, frowning and pulling back to see his face. "I was horrified that I'd just killed my wolf. I thought,  _ I really love you _ , and then I kissed you with it, and then wolf-you was… gone." She'd  _ felt  _ it, something snapping free under her lips, some essential spark of aliveness blinking from existence, and it had sent her stumbling back in horror for what she'd done. A shiver trembled down around the cold pit of her stomach.   


Spike’s fingertips traced the curve of her jaw softly, something wistful and sad in his eyes. "Not saying I wasn't a tad disappointed to change," he said slowly, "but it was necessary. And I'm glad it was you. And so what if you killed me? I got over it." He smiled hopefully at her, cajoling.   


"Yeah," she murmured, feeling out for the source of this latest touch of doubt in him. "I'm glad you're back in yourself again…" Yep, that was it. Silly pup-vampire, did he really think she regretted this change to his outside? But of course he would. She firmed up her voice. "I'm not sorry I did it. Just really wasn't the effect I'd been going for in the moment."

"Then try again," he said quietly, lowering his head to her.   


She quailed, completely irrational fear gripping onto her, and leaned back from him.   


Every inch of him that was still touching her tensed in return, and he looked away to the floor beside them, face closing off tightly. "Nevermind. Stupid idea." He felt like he was about to slither away from her.

She tightened her fingers in his coat. "No." Took a fortifying breath. "Let me. Just- don't turn into anything else?"   


His eyes jumped back to hers, body easing under her grip. "I won’t," he said gently.   


"Okay." Still irrationally nervous, but determined to get past it, she stretched up and pressed her lips to the smooth, furless skin of his forehead in a tiny kiss.   


Nothing happened.   


She blew out the breath she'd been holding. "Okay," she said again, lips tugging into a self-deprecating smile.   


He didn't laugh. His eyes were watching her with that deep, soft look again, the one that was all love, the letters of it only too big to read earlier. But now there was something else in it too, something darkening his pupils, something intent and hungry in a way that had nothing to do with bloodlust.   


Her chest felt light, like the butterflies had turned into sparrows, all flapping their wings in unison, beating her heart faster and fluttering her breath with their feathers, the current of their movement an answer to the unspoken want in his eyes. She slid the tip of her tongue between her lips, conscious suddenly of the echo of his skin on them.   


His eyelashes dipped in soft flutters of their own as his gaze drew down to her lips, then he leaned in and kissed her there, plush, cool lips pressing gently against her tingly ones, soft and almost chaste but for a tiny sweep of the end of his tongue that begged more.   


She couldn't respond, the sparrows all flapping wildly now and chirping like a drowning applause over any thoughts she'd ever had. She thought perhaps  _ she  _ had turned into something else, her body forgetting which way blood was supposed to go and dropping it all from her head until her knees felt literally weak and she'd thought that was a purple-prose description and not a thing that could actually happen and certainly not to slayers in any case-

And now he was watching her very worriedly, like it had taken him by surprise too, and pulling back from her. " _ Fuck _ ," he whispered, fear blossoming in his eyes, lips now pressed tightly together on themselves, squashing away their softness. "I'm sorry, Buffy, I shouldn't've-"

"Don't," she said, tightening her grip on him for a second time. He couldn’t flee after doing that; she needed him to hold her upright.   


He froze where he was, wide eyes full of questions or maybe just one really big one.

"Yes. More," she answered, hoping he would hear that much through all the flapping, uncaring how idiotic she sounded because it was his fault for exploding her brain like this.

He heard. He inched closer again, breathing fast and light with her birds now, one or both of them tense and trembling. There was something inside of him held restrained still, straining at its tethers as it pulled towards her, something she needed to claw free and… she didn't know. But her body did, and so when his lips moved towards hers she met them hungrily, hands dropping the leather of his coat to slide inside it and pull him closer.

This time he kissed her like the ravenous wild creature part of him was, fierce and single-minded and driven only by need. His mouth was warmer than his lips had been, though still cooler than hers; blood-warmed and laced with the metallic, iron-rich taste of it. It should probably have disturbed her, shaken her sensibilities into protest, but she knew blood, knew it intimately in all its forms, and she had given him this, and it felt only right. So she chased the flavour from his tongue with her own, marking out the shape and feel of this first part of him she could explore.   


She broke the kiss gasping, head spinning from more than the lack of oxygen, hands clinging to him for support and glad for the solid bench behind her. His lips moved down her jaw, nudging soft little kisses into her, and she tipped her head back to give him better access, wondering if this was wise but not caring if it wasn't. Blunt, gentle teeth nibbled down the side of her throat, and all of it swirled together with the electric buzzing of her vampy senses until it dragged a throaty, indecent sort of moaning sound from her.   


That obscenely pornographic noise would have embarrassed her like a bucket of icy water, except that she felt it roll through him under her palms, a little shudder of a thrill that elicited a purry growling sound from low in his throat in response. One of his hands slid up her thigh and around to cup her behind, taking her weight off her wobbly legs, so she wrapped them around him instead, pulling him yet closer against her and needing him closer still.   


Some background bit of conscience tried to pipe up as his lips nuzzled their way back up to hers, but she smacked away its demand to know what she thought she was doing.  _ This. I'm doing this. _ Then she was kissing him again, the fierceness catching and growing, her hands running over the muscle and sinew of his back and side and starting to claw at the fabric in their way. His belt - she thought, maybe,  _ oh god _ \- was touching the denim between her thighs, and she wanted to press him closer there with her legs, grind herself down against him, but was that, like, the done thing or too wanton and how was she supposed to know what to do next here and probably he should just do it because her brain was still in bits.   


His hands stilled on her back and butt, and he slid his mouth down to her ear while she kissed the spot in front of his.   


" _ Buffy?" _ he groaned, like something starved past desperation.

The trembling, forced restraint in his voice and palms finally gave her pause. "Yes?" she squeaked, shyness rushing in now, glad to be able to hide her face in his neck.

"Is this what you want?" he asked huskily, breath curling around her ear.

"Yes," she said, voice quieter but less squeaky.

"Are you sure?" he asked, pulling back just far enough to see her eyes. His were turbulent oceans of too many things to name, storm-tossed waves she swam in.

"Yes," she told him, firmer now in the face of his worry. "Yes, Spike." Except maybe he didn’t. Want this. Or felt like he had to. "If you do. We don't have to… I mean, I'm not… not if you don't." Oop, no, there went all her confidence again.   


He breathed out shaky half-laugh, half-sigh. "Fuck. Of course I bleeding want to. Want you so much I can hardly stand."

She closed her eyes for a second on a rolling wave of relief. He did. She could feel it, but she was kinda all over the place on a slippery floor.

His thumb stroked across her back, and he bowed his head to her. "But I don't want something happening in the heat of the moment that you might ever regret," he continued. "You don't have to be ready." He tried to pull away further, but she stopped him with her heels.   


"I am ready," she said, then bit her lip. "I just don't…" oh no, she was blushing, "want to do something wrong."

He chuckled under his breath, a relieved, relaxing sound. "You could never." He considered her for a moment, then added, "And I'd tell you, okay?"

She nodded. He would, now, she hoped. It felt like he'd understood that about her. "Me too," she whispered, because he was still quivering in place like he wasn't convinced, and that needy, hungry feeling was starting to flood back through her.

"What happened to waiting?" he asked hoarsely, dropping his soft lips back to her at last, kissing his way around the underneath of her jaw.

A bolt of gladness that they were obviously on the same page with where this was heading was followed by a trickle of a tailing thought that perhaps he thought she really hadn't done  _ anything  _ with boys, and maybe she should reassure him that she had… touched stuff before, but it hadn't been anything like this- and then she knew what the truth was, now that she was feeling it. Pushing him back enough to meet his eyes again, she said, "I was waiting for  _ this _ ."   


And then they were kissing again. 


	27. Closer

Spike lifted her higher to sit down on the bench, freeing his arms to shuck off his coat. It fell into a pool of black leather on the floor, and now he had pale arms, smooth and furless as they reached for her waist again. She slid her hands up them, mapping out the lines and curves, and his eyes turned to follow the path of her fingers up the left one. The thumping urgency between them ground down to a deeper, steadier pulse, and she stroked her fingers down and up again, feeling the skittery edges of her emotions calming, hurried desperation giving way to a low, smouldering togetherness.   


Eventually her hands found their way up to his shoulders, fingers fanning out to explore curves and hollows and find places to settle and rub. He turned his face up from nuzzling her forearm to kiss her again, and it was slow and soft and molten, melting her insides into warm treacle. Where they'd just agreed this was going no longer seemed important; everything had become timeless and patient. Perhaps  _ he _ wasn't ready, for all that he wanted to be. She wasn't going to ask, because she had to be able to trust him, if him being here at all was going to have any chance of working; trust him to tell her what he needed from her. And because she didn't need to ask at the moment. Talking was overrated. Her gut had steered her right with him every time she'd followed it, and she was listening to it now. And it said he needed this, as much as she wanted it.   


He oozed up closer against her, more feline than canine now, all supple and nuzzly like he wanted to rub his cheeks on her and purr. Hands swept around her back, gathering her in, tugging her from the bench towards wrapping herself around his waist again. She looped her hands around the back of his neck in case he tried to spook away again, then slid her feet to the floor between his, breaking off the kiss to look up at him.

"Come upstairs," she murmured, watching the way his lower eyelashes splayed out like little pointed star fingers across his skin, releasing her fingers from their hold on each other to spread out the same way across the back of his neck. The tail ends of his hair curled down softly there, and her thumb found its way to them, feeling through the texture and slide of this not-fur. It still smelt faintly like her conditioner, so she was probably responsible for the soft fluffiness of it.  _ Wooliness. You were a sheep in wolf's clothing.  _ A different sort from the demon-eyed ones that had watched her so suspiciously. Sheep were not what the stories said them to be, she was certain. But he was neither. He was Spike.

He nodded agreement with her suggestion, eyes so intent on staring down through hers that she doubted he'd comprehended it. She took his hand again, so he wouldn't get lost, and led him to her room.   


Morning sun was streaming through a shifting dapple of leaves into the room, so she left him in the doorway to close the curtains, tucking the edges down carefully. The room instantly became cosier, warmed by the peachy-yellow hue of the fabric filtering the light, closed away from anything that existed beyond it. She stepped back from settling the last edge into place, then he was behind her, one hand sliding around her hip to turn her smoothly into him, lips seeking hers.   


She kissed him with all the gentle diffusion of that golden light, and the connection of it spread out through her like the touch of a warm furry coat, comforting and encouraging. His hands became firmer on her hips, rubbing up her side, down her thigh, and the low, molten feeling grew restless and hungry, wanting more, more of this, more  _ than _ this, all of him touching her everywhere. She pressed herself closer into him, hands moving on their own, fingertips kneading their way down his back until they met the stiff leather of his belt, then slipping under the hem of his shirt to touch his cool, naked skin. He hissed in a breath, tugging her closer still, then kissed her harder for a moment before wrenching his mouth away to start tugging off his shirt. It slid free, this false skin, another layer of the cloak of shadows that had hidden him, then dangled from his fingers above the floor, as though he wasn't quite ready to relinquish it entirely.   


God, he was beautiful. All lean, strong muscle that whispered to her of hunting and running and fighting, of strength she could loose her own upon and know it would be firmly met. And he was nervous again. Naked to the waist before her, the stiffness of his spine and those clinging fingers giving him away. Exposed, while all of the parts of her she was shyest about were still tucked away. She grabbed the bottom hem of her own shirt and pulled it off over her head, then reached for the hooks of her bra, forgetting insecurities about her small breasts and unfeminine torso, because it didn't matter, what mattered was that he should not be alone in his level of nakedness, and should be pressing all that skin to hers.   


Relief and something like awe crossed his face as she dropped her bra, and she got it then; that he wasn't worried by his own nakedness but the effect it might have on her. Because he loved her. And not for this. This was an unexpected extra, and he was as wary of somehow messing everything up with it as she was, and as unable to resist trying to get it right anyway. She smiled thankfully at him, the mutuality reassuring.   


His shirt fell forgotten to the floor as his hands reached for her again, fingers light as her sparrow's wings alighting on her hips as though she were some precious, delicate thing. His lips moved, as though he were going to say something, then he licked them instead, the feathery wings of his eyelashes fluttering with her chest. His eyes travelled over her naked stomach, each breast, up her neck, over her tingling lips, and she felt the swirling trail of them like he was laving it with his tongue. When they met hers they were darker, soft as midnight skies and velvet with lust, and she felt suddenly very beautiful too, as though he'd painted his hunter's beauty on with that gaze and wrapped her up in it with him. Fingers caressed their way out across her lower ribs, then he was walking her backwards to the bed, easing her down onto it, and she was pulling him down with her until his silken chest brushed her nipples.   


She learnt the exact curve of each of his ribs; the way muscle glid across them as he moved. The enticing line of his flank, down to where it disappeared into his jeans. The taste of the hollows of his collarbone, of the smooth skin of his chest, of each of his small nipples that pebbled up under her tongue. The little shudders and growly moans he would make if she dragged her teeth across the skin of his neck the way he had hers. And she learnt the way his fingers could knead deliciously deep into the muscles of her back, or feather across her face, or trail tantalisingly below her belly button, and the way his mouth could send lightning zaps sparking from her nipples down to the wetness between her thighs that made her gasp.   


His fingers dipped under the very edge of her jeans, sweeping across her lower belly, then he paused them there, shifting back onto his elbow beside her to look her in the eyes.   


"Yes," she breathed, because there was a question in his look, one that was carefully restraining the hunger in his fingers, and she wanted them free, free to keep finding new places to touch her, and  _ yes _ was the only answer she could think of.   


He smiled, a wolfish smirk of a smile that was full of returning confidence, then flicked open the button of her jeans and slid his hand inside. His cool fingers brought heat flooding towards them, and her arching into them, the urgency from earlier racing back because oh, this was so much better than her own hands and she needed more and now. His fingers obliged, delving down into hot wet places, one of them somehow managing to precisely circle her clit while the others were touching elsewhere, and she pressed her face back into his neck to taste his skin again, almost wanting to nip and bite at him to get closer.   


" _ God, Buffy, you're sodding heaven," _ he murmured, his lips on the top of her head and was he sniffing her?   


She should say something, but what did someone say to that? Then his hand shifted, the heel of it rubbing against her clit and a finger sliding inside her, and she breathed a soft little gasp of pleasure onto the just-licked skin of his neck, and maybe that was it because his eyes were bright with satisfaction when he bent around to kiss her again.   


She couldn't get enough of his fingers. Two of them flickered and swirled inside of her while his palm began to set a rhythm, and she ground herself forward into it, past caring how forward she was being as long as he never stopped. She panted quietly while he kissed her in soft, open little kisses, and it was unfair really, she was rocketing towards an orgasm on his fingers when she hadn't come anyway near to exploring all of him yet. So she traced that line down his flank again, over his belt and down one thigh, then back up between them, feeling greedy and illicit as her fingertips traced over the bulge in his jeans.   


She was rewarded with another sharp hiss of breath, stirring things in her belly, so she fingered the buckle of his belt and whispered, " _ Can I?" _ He had asked. It felt okay to.

_ "Please," _ he groaned, his voice going ragged with want, and it sent a vibrant thrill of lust jolting through her, empowering and exciting; she tugged at his belt to free him from it. The buckle was tricky while she was all throbbing and rubbing against him, but eventually it slithered free and she could undo the button of his jeans and then his cock was leaping into her hand. Her fingers curled around it like they knew what they were doing, gliding up and down to explore the length and velvet-on-steel texture of it, and maybe they did, because she had imagined this, long ago nights with her own hands touching herself; imagined what might be under his silver-buckled belt and how it would feel under her fingers.   


He was panting now too, thrusting into her hand slightly, tongue thrusting into her mouth in short dives, then he quickened the pace of his fingers and it all collided together and she was gone, convulsing around his fingers with a keening whimper in her throat.   


The little aftershocks faded away while he peppered kisses across her face, and a portion of newly-freed blood raced back up to warm her cheeks. She hadn't even got her pants off. Or his. Somewhere in there she'd let go of his cock to sink her fingernails into his hip, anchoring herself or trying to urge him closer, she wasn't sure, maybe both, and now it was nudging into her side all lonely and neglected. Masturbating was obviously not the prior experience she needed to do this well.   


He kissed the warm point of her cheek hungrily, his thumb shifting to stroke the soft curls between her legs, and murmured to her with a knowing, sly hint of proud smugness, " _ Yes, more?"   
_

" _ Yes _ ," she breathed gratefully, and slid her fingers down under the denim on his thigh. There was more of him to explore.   


She tasted her way down his chest again, pushing him back on the bed. His hand drew out of her panties with slow dragging reluctance, then he was shoving off his jeans and toeing at his boots. She leant back to rid herself of the rest of her own clothes, stupid unnecessary things keeping their skin apart.   


Legs freed, she turned to exploring his, fingers tracing the length of his thigh and curve of his knee, her legs winding around one of his like they had plans of their own, and oh they did, because he shifted his thigh slightly and then it was rubbing slowly on the molten core of her. She kissed his chest again, then splayed a hand out on it to hold him down, because she was  _ not _ about to start humping his leg and inviting bitch jokes while he looked so sly and smug. There was almost a touch of competitiveness in his face now, and she was damn well going to win, so she slithered down and wrapped her lips around the head of his cock. His whole body quaked, sending another lancing thrill of lust shivering through her, then his tongue seemed to unstick like she'd broken another spell and released it properly, curses and compliments tumbling from his lips like ribald jewels of blessing that fell all tingly and sweet down into her. Her hands and lips grew bolder with them, touching everywhere with firm strokes and hard kisses, making him writhe and pant deliciously, thrumming her blood with a keen awareness of her own power and the craving to feel his. She took his cock in her mouth again, the tip of her tongue memorising shape and form, and because his smugness had evaporated into  _ please, Buffy, fuck, god, you glorious thing, _ she ground herself down against his leg like some wanton debauchee, caring only that he touch her there somehow. His words strangled into a moan, then he grabbed her shoulders, dragging her up and onto her back and surging on top of her to hold her there, hands hard on the front of her shoulders, firm in a way that made her arch her waist into him because yes, this what she needed, somewhere in here, them grappling and pushing hard against each other. He forced her hips back down on the bed with one hand, then dove down on her, licking the heated, needy skin between her legs with a single long sweep of his exquisitely cool tongue, then pressing lips and blunt teeth and the swirling tip of it to her throbbing clit and everything around it. She gasped, writhed against him ( _ so _ much better than his leg), pleasure cascading upwards again and desperate for him not to stop but also yearning, burning, for more than this, caught between needs until her grasping hand fell on his bicep and she hauled him back up. He paused there, panting shallowly over her, quivering on the cliff edge with his eyes a deep dark ocean of drowning desire and his cock nudging at her in aching, desperate tease, and this was it, she'd found the place inside of him where something was still held back, straining against its bonds, so she searched her scrambled brain and panted, half commanding and half begging, " _ Fuck me _ ." And his restraint snapped, and he drove into her, sleek and hard against her clenching muscles, and she let her head fall back blindly and met his thrusts and the world fractured and exploded in gasping cries.

  
  


Buffy yawned sleepily, snuggling more into his side, fingers examining each of his fingernails on the hand wrapped around her. "I think I like you having hands," she said idly, dragging his fingertips closer to kiss the back of one.

He chuckled, mellow and complete and more than a little stunned, floating on fluffy clouds of Buffy-ness. He was  _ in _ her bed now, snuggled under the covers with her hot, golden skin pressed against him, and fuck if he knew quite how it had happened. He turned his fingers over, stroking the top of her chest with the back of his knuckles. "You  _ think,  _ or you  _ know?" _ he asked softly.   


"I  _ know _ ," she murmured, then looked up at him, her eyes all big and serious. "And… I know I love you," she said quietly.   


The sentence felt like she'd taken the  _ think _ and  _ might  _ from earlier and traded them for an _ I know… but… _ left hanging. And comfortable languor was rolling away before a horizon full of stormclouds, menacing their way across the sky, prompting tension back into the limbs sprawled across and around him. He was in the storm, he knew; the unknown element behind impenetrable clouds, the creature mist-hidden and full of lightning destruction. "I love you too," he told her, arm stiffening slightly around her shoulders, ready to defend their raft of a bed from whatever the storm might throw around it.   


She looked down, watching her index finger trace tiny circles on the side of his chest, pulling her tension into submission. She would fight the storm, run to meet it and tear him blindly from it if his defences cracked, and so he could find only empathy for her fear of it. Love was a dangerous thing.   


Lifting her eyes back to his, she whispered, "Why?"

" _ Why… _ " The question was preposterous. "How could anyone  _ not _ love you?" He rolled over to face her properly, fingers tracing a line from the top of her head down to the curve of her waist while he bit back the first hundred answers that leapt to mind and searched for the one she needed; she wasn't fishing for compliments. She was more asking the same stupified  _ how _ that he had. "Not because you rescued me," he said wryly, before becoming earnest. "But because you're so bloody caring that you  _ wanted _ to. Not because I happened to be alone and lonely in a loveless castle, but because I have  _ never _ felt more connected with anyone than I do with you. Not because I don't know what the hell else to do with myself, but because nothing out there could ever compare to lying here with you. Okay?"   


She moved her head in a tiny nod, pressing her lips together shyly.   


Right answers, then. Strange to realise he hadn't said any of this to her aloud already, the amount of time he'd spent thinking it at her while she slept or talked or ate, or of her while she was away. "And because you… you shine brighter than the sun, luv," he murmured, more of those thoughts slipping out after the intended ones. "The spirit of you blazes so fiercely it dims all of Fairy and turns gilded ballrooms into tawdry displays of accidie. The beat of your heart can bring a whole room alive together, pulsing with the song of your body and breathing only for the fire in your eyes, and you let me follow at your back with that music coursing through me."   


She wasn't recoiling, or laughing, just watching him with a very still, slightly astonished look.   


He slid his hand back up her body, curling around her shoulder then down the line of her collarbone; nipped his voice back to something more playful, a smile in it. "You take the shitty path you've been dealt and you  _ laugh _ as you skip outside of the borders of it, following your heart when the signs stop making sense. You break free from the compulsion of a Halloween spell, and you bloody  _ smirk _ at me and quote the next line of the story."

Her lips curved into a kittenish little smile.

He took her hand from his side, kissing the tips of her fingers as she had done, then pressed it to his cheek, all soft and warm there. "And because I love  _ your _ hands, hands that can tear the dripping heart from a hellbeast or soothe it into meek adoration with just the stroke of one finger."

Her eyes shimmered, reflecting the achingly tender feeling in his chest. "I…" she whispered, then blinked a couple of times. "I love you having a voice, too," she murmured, the words almost apologetic, as though he'd piled up too many before hers.   


He kissed her, ardent and covetous, chasing the imprint of those beautiful words on her lips, hands pulling her closer as she kissed him back just as desirously. Easing down to softer, snugglier little nibbles and licks, he trailed his way down under her chin again, this fearless baring of her slender, pulse-humming throat a continuous lure for his lips. Lips that were  _ his _ again, known in the press of them to her body. She had found him inside him, or he had found himself inside of her, and everything had drawn back together in the music of her ecstasy.  _ Their  _ ecstasy. She had stared down through all of the confusion and fear and cried out to something that had been lost in it these long years, and it had smashed free to roar an answer to her summons. And she had met its power joyfully. He was Spike, who had once planned to kill this unquenchable creature, but didn't need to, because oh, kissing was so much sweeter, and her fire burnt like beautiful rapture on his tongue. He would kill  _ for  _ her, fight for her, and the determination to do so was a livewire in his steely veins. But first; first there needed to be more of this. "I suspect," he murmured between little laps at her skin, "you might also be becoming fond of this tongue."

" _ Yes, _ " she all but purred, melting up against him, crashing all of his blood towards his suddenly aching cock. "I  _ love  _ your tongue."   


He was on his way further down her chest to show her new things he could do with it, when the phone rang, blaring and shrill right beside the bed. Buffy’s nails dug into his skin as she startled at the sound, and his blunter fingers clenched hard enough to have bruised anyone but her. Hastily letting go, she pulled the blanket down around herself as she moved away to answer it.   


Coldness rushed in where she had just been pressed, sending a shiver of foreboding through his mind. Shocked back to the reality beyond her body, everything that had just passed between them felt too blissful to possibly be true. A silent growl of gritty defiance tickled in his chest. He would damn well  _ make _ it true.

"Hello?" Buffy said, her public front smoothly back in place with the blanket.   


"Buffy." Ah, the watcher. Sounding… relieved? "Did- has anything happened? With Spike?"

He held his frozen position, listening in closely to the speaker held to her ear across the width of bed. Odd not to feel his ears swivelling like satellite dishes to catch every tiny nuance of sound, but he could still hear well enough.   


Her brows drew down into a quizzical frown. "Why?" she asked slowly, tensing.   


"There's another story in this book you brought back," Giles said, sounding flustered. "I'm certain I didn't miss it earlier - I fail to see how I could have - I have to surmise that it must have appeared at some point during the past eighteen hours-"

"What does it say?" Buffy demanded, her voice hard and tight.

"It's called  _ The Greedy Thief. _ A sort of moralistic fable, about a little girl who snuck into a witch's castle and stole away one of her dogs."

"And?" Buffy prompted, a warning growl lurking in her tone now.   


"And when she got the dog home, she kissed it goodnight, and it turned into a demon. It, ah,  _ 'swiftly devoured the girl, thus proving that those who take what is not theirs often find their reward more than they bargained for.' _ That’s the end."

"Oh," Buffy said, her voice toneless.   


"I could read you the entire text if you like? It's barely two pages. Or perhaps you should wait until you get here and see for yourself. I seem to remember there being many more blank pages, but there are none in here now. Anyway, I thought it best to warn you immediately, in case you were seized by any sudden urges to, ah, kiss him goodnight. I would suggest you make your way over here immediately; an act which has been prophesied like this may not be something you can simply resist doing."

"It's not a- a prophecy," she said, then took a deep breath. "I kissed him last night. He turned back into himself. He's here now. I was, um, going to call you."

"He's- You were- Are you okay?"

"I'm not a little girl, Giles," she said dryly. "I can handle one vampire."

"Yes, yes of course…" Giles stammered.   


Buffy chewed her lip, thinking, then glanced at the curtained windows. "Let Jenny know she doesn't need to make with the magic tonight. But we'll be over at sundown to see that book."

"Buffy-" Giles took a breath, and when he spoke again there was a harder note of concern in his voice. "You remember what Jenny spoke to you about?"

"Yes," Buffy said curtly. "We'll see you later." She hung up the phone with a soft click, then stayed sitting where she was, staring down at it.

His arms ached to pull her back over into their nest, but he was far from sure the action wouldn't prompt her into getting out of bed entirely to face him with that impenetrable look of cold defence. "You're no Greedy Thief," he murmured, softly, softly. "You're the-"  _ fiery golden princess. _ Except she wasn't; not only. "Buffy. Buffy who cannot be constrained by spiteful scribblings in another sodding book-" He closed his lips again, biting down the snark. They had managed, yesterday, days before; smaller questions, certainly, but important ones all the same. He couldn’t be so bloody thick as to forget everything learnt in frustration then.   


Buffy looked over at him slowly, her eyes distant.   


The moment's pause spun the watcher's words back around in his own head, and he felt a smile tugging at his lips as they flipped over into a different truth. "I've  _ already _ devoured you," he said, injecting a ripple of lasciviousness into his tone. It slid away just as fast, and he told her in an artless murmur, "And I think it was more than either of us bargained for. But you never took what wasn't yours, Buffy. You made me  _ mine _ , and  _ I _ make myself yours."  _ I hope.  _ "If you'll have me," he added in a near-whisper.   


"I already have," she said in a tiny, daring voice, her eyes clear and focused again as she swept them over him pointedly. Shimmying back into bed, she dropped her hold on the blanket and wriggled over into his waiting arms, pressing her face into his chest. "And I hope to do so again."

God, she was adorable, all sparkling playfulness and intense passion under this shifting veneer of blushing proprietary. "Good," he said, and kissed the top of her head. Remembered he'd been about to get that part where she had him again, but the urgency of it had faded with her commitment to it. She was softening against him, breath slowing into something deep and calm, so he closed his eyes and listened to her doze off, sated by the feel of her in his arms.

  
  


He must have drifted off at some point too, because when he blinked his eyes open to swallow another look at her, she was watching him quietly in the whiter light of early afternoon. She blinked her eyes down for a second, looking caught out, but then went straight back to watching him, bold and willfully provocative. He bent his head to kiss her again, then spidered his fingers up her ribs and tickled her until she broke away to snatch his hands, giggling.   


"That’s what you get," he told her, nibbling and licking at her earlobe to make her squirm further. "You deliciously brazen thing."

She laughed again, wrestling with him for a few moments before shoving him back and pressing him down to snuggle into again. He acquiesced gladly, hands turning to smooth, calming strokes down her back, the burst of excitement melting down into soft contentment.   


"Spike?" she asked quietly, then pushed herself up to see his face again. "Tell me this isn't a fairy-tale."

His first impulse was to laugh and tease her with a line about the big bad wolf in her bed, but no, she was serious, serious enough to need it from him too. "This isn't a fairy-tale," he said gently. "This is real."

"And it wasn't meant to happen at all, was it?" Her palm settled over his heart, feeling the stillness there again. "You were meant to devour me properly, or I was meant to collar you wolfily, or Dru was supposed to make me dance in red-hot iron shoes until I died."

"They'd have melted on your feet," he told her, smiling. But something Angel had liked to blabber on about was circling her words; he thrust a knife through it. "I'm not your  _ destiny _ ." He rolled his eyes at the concept. "I just love you. Not  _ just _ . Bloody love you, enough to burn all the books and fuck over any conventions. Okay?"

It was. She relaxed, grinning. "Good. Because I just  _ bloody _ love you too."

His hands pulled her closer, body full of a rushing buzz of exhilarating energy at her words and needing to share it with her. "Now, what was that you said about me not having devoured you  _ properly,  _ my delectable little rebel?" he asked, and rolled her over beneath him. "I think I'd better put that to rights."

She smiled, excitement and anticipation and still a strong blush of shyness in it. That last one he  _ would _ devour, nibbling it from her skin until she begged and demanded and finally grabbed him by a fistful of hair to  _ make  _ him serve her as she needed.   


"Tell me," he murmured, kissing his way down her chest to circle one nipple, "what you want."

" _ More _ ," she sighed, arching into him. "I want  _ more. _ "

  
  
  



	28. Everything a big bad wolf could want

Buffy fingered her collarbone in the (very  _ un _ -magical) bathroom mirror while the shower warmed up, tracing the shape of his human teeth in a shallow bruise on it. A few more marks stood out above it, fading in level of contrast as they ran up towards her neck, which remained as unmarked as ever (which was to say, only bearing the single set of pale white scars from her brief slip into death). Spike had been so gentle with his teeth there, whether worried of frightening her or himself she wasn't sure, but she almost wished he'd bitten harder, bruised, left his vivid colour branding over the faded old scars. That wasn't weird, was it? She wasn't, like, into him because he could bite. She'd fallen for him before there was anything vampy about him at all. Except for what she'd known was hiding underneath. But that wasn't the attraction. Not at all. She'd found plenty of human men desirable too. Not like this, but still. And they- Xander had had a lurid hickey on the side of his neck last night, which they'd all politely ignored rather than give Anya an opening to point out again that they were sharing orgasms. So maybe it was only very human, to want to display your togetherness like that.   


Spike had gone very silent behind her, and she realised suddenly that she was missing half the picture in her perusal of the mirror. She turned around. He was watching her with a hint of wariness, the expression on his face more hidden than any of the rest of his proudly naked body. His very  _ distracting _ proudly naked body. She tore her eyes back up to follow the line of his gaze, which was narrowed on where her fingers still caressed the bruise she could just barely imagine was feelable.   


"I was just thinking about Xander," she told him, the wariness seeming to denote uncertainty about her. "No-" she shook her head hard, scrunching her eyes shut for a second on the frown that had leapt onto his face. "I mean, I was thinking about this," she turned her fingers over into pointing at the bruise, "and that I like it-" her cheeks were warming up again, "and wondering if it was wrong of me to want more of it, and then I remembered that Xander had that glaring hickey last night so it can't be too weird." She snapped her mouth shut. He could ask questions easily now; she didn't need to blab out everything he might need to know.   


Wariness shifted into understanding, with a few stations along the way, and he moved closer to trail the back of his fingers across the top of her chest. "Not upset about it, then?" he asked quietly. "Meant to be more careful with you." His eyes were looking down to watch his fingers, hiding them from her again, but there was something sorry about the featherlight touch of his nails.   


"I didn't want careful," she told him. "I wanted you." She set her hand over a series of pale pink lines on one of his pecs, where her nails had clawed at him unwittingly. "But I kinda meant to be more careful too." She had, until she hadn't, the true strength of her hands getting away from her at the height of her passion, which scared her now, because the true strength of her hands could rend flesh and bone apart.

His lips curved into that deliciously smug grin, and he pulled her closer until she could feel the hard lines of him through her fluffy bathrobe. "No," he told her in a rich, warm murmur. "You won't break me, slayer. So don't ever think about holding yourself back." His hand came up over hers, pushing her nails down hard into the scratches they'd made, and his cock jumped against her pelvis in response, swooshing a fresh wave of arousal through her. "Give me something to carry with me, showing I'm yours," he rumbled into her ear. "And every time I look at it, I'll remember the way your hot little muscles clenched around me as you did it."   


Her breath escaped in a pant, and she tugged the belt of her robe free to bring him inside it, inside with her. This  _ was  _ insane, she'd been right to call it that, but she didn't care, this insanity was too pleasurable to ever want to deny it, and he was just as filled with it as she was. The realisation that she hadn't,  _ wouldn't _ hurt him when her self-control blew apart was exhilarating. "Give me more, then," she told him in a sultry whisper that she'd never have thought she was capable of before today, and tipped her head back invitingly. 

  
  


Somehow, they'd made it out of the shower and back into clothes. She was rather proud of herself for it.   


Spike was sitting on the side of her bed to lace up his boots, when his fingers slowed and drifted to a stop, and he sat there staring at them distantly, his face perplexed. She watched him, waiting, and after a long moment he looked up and asked, "I guess doing people over for just their wallets is off the table?"   


"Yes…" she said slowly.   


"Pickpocketing? Don't even have to touch them then." He shook his head before she could answer. "I know, I know. Thou shalt not steal from the holy citizens of Sunnydale." He sighed, frowning to himself. "Then how in the hellmouth am I supposed to get money when I need it? If I'm gonna be buying blood I'll need cash for that, then there's booze and smokes, and whatever you need…" He looked around her room, as if trying to work out what she might require him to buy.

"I don't need anything," she said, frowning herself now, ire leaping at the suggestion that she was going to become some sort of millstone around his neck. "And most people get jobs."

"I'm not 'most people', pet," he said tonelessly.   


He really wasn't. She tried to imagine him in a regular job, and only came up with the image of a wolf begging on the footpath, a dog bowl held in its teeth. Now she was the one sighing, this first inkling of the hugeness of what she was asking him to do showing it all for the impossible mountain it must truly be.   


Then he shrugged, carefree and indifferent to the concerns of a moment ago, and finished tying his laces with a few quick tugs of his fingers. "I'll figure something out," he said lightly, and bounced to his feet to join her by the desk, arms winding around her waist eagerly.   


She put her hands on his hips, steadying against his whiplash change of mood.

"What?" he asked, brow furrowing as he studied her face.   


"I'm asking a lot," she said sadly.   


"Oh, bollocks," he told her, chuckling. "Forget that, you, right now. I'm not bloody incompetent. Just gonna take a bit of rethinking old ideas, is all." He chewed at his lip for a moment, staring off to the side. "Least the factory's sorted. And I've got…" he trailed off, then dropped his face into her shoulder, snickering in an embarrassed-sounding way.

He was so  _ cuddly.  _ She moved her hands around to his back to hold him to her, filling up with that fuzzy, fizzy, happy feeling he'd been evoking all week, smiling to herself. His offhand  _ bollocks  _ was right; they would sort everything out. She could skip and dance through any problem the world had to offer when she felt like this. "What?" it was her turn to ask.

"Buried my wallet in the backyard," he said into her shoulder, chuckling. He looked up. "Went and…" he rolled his eyes in self-mockery, " _ retrieved _ it, that first night, thinking I should pay you back for the food at least, but then I got worried you might take it the wrong way if I started shoving cash at you. It's under the lilac bush."   


She chuckled with him, at the picture of him digging a hole to bury his first thoughts, at the whole crazy week.   


"The money's clean," he told her hopefully. "Well, figuratively, it's probably muddy now- stashed it from what we took from the till at that wannabe vampire bar." He cocked his head. "So I guess all of it's yours, really; to the winner the spoils and all." His lightheartedness faded into uncertainty again. "That is morally acceptable, right? Wankers were lucky that was all they lost-" he bit the sentence off, probably remembering that it  _ wasn't  _ all any of them lost.

She held thoughts of Ford aside to focus on the question at hand. Far, far aside… "Really not," she said apologetically. "I don't go around looting the premises after saving people."

"Why not? Least they can do to thank you. And it's not like the vamps need it; notice you never check their pockets either."

"I- I don't stake vampires for any  _ loot _ they might drop," she hissed, het up at the whole scummy idea.

" _ No _ , you stake them because it's the right thing to do. Doesn’t mean you can't strip them of cash first, if it's safe to, instead of dusting all that handy dandy US currency. Breaking the law, that is. National Treasury'll be after you." He shot her a grin, pleased with his argument.

"I missed this," she said, flicking a more subdued smile back. "Butting heads with you." It was relieving, as much as it was invigorating; knowing she could spit out any argument she liked and have it torn up and batted back at her. It almost felt like sparring. Except, she wasn't quite feeling the mood right now. "You're right," she told him plainly, raising his eyebrows. "But it's not me. It just doesn't sit right. But I suppose I can't really object to what anyone else does… do they even have money? I thought they just took what they wanted."

He snorted. "Course they have money. How do you think Willy earns his living? Take what you want by killing the barman one night, and the next the bar will be closed and a pack of angry punters are on your tail…" he trailed off again, reminding her just how much sensitive territory there was between his history and knowledge and her, while simultaneously sparking her interest in just how much she didn't know about the everyday lives of her everyday foes. Expression shifting at a new thought, he brushed his knuckles across her chin, sobering rapidly. "You're right too. Fuck, don't you ever bloody pause to wonder what's in their pockets, luv. Forget I ever said it."

"I won’t," she promised, caught by the worry in his eyes. She looked down, chewing over the subject she'd held aside. It was one thing to accept that he was a vampire. It was wholly another to realise that the same mouth that had just been kissing her - and a whole lot more - had probably also torn out her friend's throat. Whether he'd asked for it or not. Uncountable others hadn't. It shouldn't make a difference that this one victim had been her friend. But it did. "Was it you?" she asked quietly. "That turned Ford. In the club."   


He hesitated for a moment, wavering, then told her with a sort of wary defiance, "Yes."

She nodded, glad for the honesty. "Did-" She sighed, unsure what she wanted to ask.

He searched her face, then sighed, pursing his lips. "Wish I'd made the arsehole scream," he said regretfully. "Doing you dirty like that. But it was a business arrangement. Nothing more. He woke up, reminded me of it; I half drained him, gave him a few drops to start the turn. Dru finished him off once he was out." He sighed again, like he needed to shake something off. "Was a comfortable death, as far as they go."

She nodded again, accepting this. "Thank you. For telling me the truth." He could have made up some story of Ford having last-minute regrets for betraying her, but he hadn't. And he could have pretended to feel guilty about killing him, but it would have been just that, pretending.   


He pulled a lopsided frown, eyes conflicted and still wary. "Yeah, well… okay, it sucks. But it's done. Can't change it. Can only change the future."

She pulled him closer, tucking her head under his chin and leaning into him silently, not looking to comfort or seeking it, just… letting that future stabilise beneath their feet. It did, into gentle, even breaths and soft hands.   


"We'd better start with digging up your wallet," she said, stepping away. "There's a spade somewhere. Just how deep are we talking, miscreant puppy of mine?"

  
  


He couldn’t come outside yet, so she followed his pointing from the back door and found a patch of disturbed earth under the bushes. It only took one lift of the spade to unearth a grubby brown leather wallet, and she laughed as she shook it off, stamped the dirt back down, and ran back to the foot of the porch. " _ So _ much more rewarding than what I usually drag out of the earth," she said, throwing it over to him while she wiped the spade clean.

"You don't mean that," he told her, with a fond little smile that made her breath catch. "Or you'd already be frisking them."

"I'll frisk you!" she threatened, though what she was threatening him  _ with _ she couldn't have precisely defined. He was disarming with that damn look on his face.   


"Welcome to," he leered back.

She rolled her eyes and turned to the spade, grinning.   


When she came in he was drying the wallet off on his shirt, which then turned into inspecting the state of said shirt before he waved the wallet at her awkwardly. "Can I shove some cash at you now without it making things weird? Sure you've got better places you could've spent yours than the butcher's."

She shook her head. His intuition was correct; things were going weird. Dammit, she really didn't have any experience with a  _ relationship  _ relationship, only a vague sense that reimbursing an act of kindness felt cheapening, somehow. On the other hand, maybe it was like, emasculating, for her to refuse to let him pay for anything… but if it was, he would just have to deal. She was done with that shit. "No. You can't."

For a moment he looked as bemused by it all as she was, then his eyes lit up with a flash of inspiration. "Let me buy  _ you _ dinner, yeah? Somewhere decent."

She smiled, caught momentarily by the idea of  _ going out for dinner, _ her hair done up and the perfect shoes on her feet. But then she had a better idea. "No. Get the round of takeaways tomorrow, for this cake-unbirthday thing." If it was still happening. If he even wanted to come. "If you're coming?" she hastened to add.   


"I'd love to," he murmured, almost bashful until he turned it into a self-deprecating and wry grin.

She giggled quietly at him, her, both of them. "It's hard, isn't it? Why is it so hard?"   


"Because," he murmured, discarding his wallet onto the bench to reach for her hips instead, "no one's written it for us." He shrugged one shoulder lightly, abandoning his alluring prowliness for that shyly open look that was even more alluring. "And because it matters. Getting it right. Making you happy."

"You do. Make me happy," she said, hoping that a hint of just how much so showed on her face.   


If his sparkling eyes were anything to go by, it did.   


When she opened her eyes again from the dreamy state they fell into every time he kissed her, daylight was already dimming towards sunset. She was going to have to add 'losing hours of time' to her list of new things to adapt to, because refusing to fall into him and forget the world was unthinkable. Besides, it left her energised, recharged, comfortably confident that no problem was undefeatable, so it wasn't lost time but more like invested.   


"Ready?" she asked him. Ready to re-meet Giles and Jenny, ready to defend on the spot what they'd only barely begun to work out the practicalities of, ready to both accept old prejudices and hold his chin up to them.

In response he only arched an eyebrow at her, daring and cocksure.   


She smiled. "I do have a certain pair of ears you could wear, to go with that wolfy grin."

"Oh?" he asked curiously.   


"From Halloween. Ethan's. I don't really think you should risk trying them on again, though."

"You kept those?"

"Yep." She wasn't sure exactly why, except that she'd wanted to. "But they're not as soft as real ones." She ran her hand over the fluffy curls on his head that she'd sworn she didn't possess hair gel for. "Or as this."

"We've got to get you a dog to pet, slayer," he muttered. "I'll give it two days, then I'm hunting down the gel and scissors."

Oh, it was  _ two  _ days now. He'd agreed one was sensible, to carry the association between wolf-him and this-him for the scoobs and not immediately look  _ quite _ so much like the violent opponent they vaguely remembered from two years ago. But this second one had to be because of the way her fingers kept drifting back to it. "I can't have a dog," she said. "I don't even live here."

"I'll keep it at the factory. Inducement for you to visit."

"It wouldn't stop me doing this," she said, patting him more showily. "And I don't think I'll need  _ inducement.  _ Factory, huh?" Somehow, she hadn't imagined him living there. Or anywhere. Or anything beyond the immediate.   


He shrugged uncomfortably. "Not exactly a font of my happiest memories, but it's a roof. It'll do, least for now. And it's mine. Not about to let your mum exercise her imprudent generosity when I've got my own place. Can start looking for somewhere… nicer," he added, frowning a little.   


There was too much in there for her to pick a starting point before he said, "What, you thought I was homeless? Well, okay, yeah, but not house-less. Roofless. Whatever." He looked  _ very _ uncomfortable now.   


"No, I…" She'd known he had stuff there, but it hadn't registered as a place he could occupy. "It's yours?"

"Yeah…" he looked like he was about to make a dig about the fact that she'd not connected it earlier, before thinking better of it. "Unwanted property's claimable for the outstanding rates around here," he said instead. "Place is a shithole, but it's legally mine. Easier to keep the power on that way, never mind about being able to relax during the day. Squatting like those other tossers were means always keeping an eye open."

"Huh," she said quietly. "And I can visit?" For a second it felt as though the world was going to swallow him up and spit her back into her lonely student life, and how did he have property and know about power bills and have this whole life and he really,  _ really  _ wasn't a dog or a wolf, was he?

"You'd damn well better," he said ardently. "If you hate it - christ, of course you'll hate it; look, I'll find something better quick smart-"

"I won’t hate it," she said. "If you're there."

He relaxed. "Well then, you'd better come and stay, because those bushes under your dorm room don't look like they'd be comfortable for long." He watched her hopefully, like he really thought she might tell him that no, he would have to sleep outside her window.   


She giggled, suddenly giddy with it all. They could do this. "Okay."

"Okay?" he asked, with the same giddy look on his face that she felt.   


"Yes. We should go there after Giles's, check it out properly. Maybe we could, um, have a camp out there tomorrow night."  _ When mom's back. _

"We could." The devious glint in his eyes said that he'd had the same thought she had.

"Good," she said brightly, and stepped away to find her jacket, suddenly eager to get the obligatory watcher-visit/book-inspection out of the way. 

  
  


"That went well," Buffy said cautiously. "I mean, no one died."

"That the bar you set for 'went well', slayer?" He chuckled. "Yeah. It did. So stop pulling that face."   


Her tight pout only grew. Fuck she was adorable. He wanted to snatch her up off the sidewalk they were walking down and kiss her to pieces while she writhed her way into his pants. Couldn’t fucking believe he hadn't spent the last week trying to hump her leg (though thank fuck he hadn't), but by bleeding christ was his libido running on overdrive now to catch up. She was the most intoxicatingly divine creature that had ever walked the earth, and why the hell were they walking so slowly? Right, yeah, she was worried about how he thought it had gone and whether the everyone-killing-each-other part had only been postponed.   


He tugged her hand, stopping her and turning her to him. Then just had to stroke her impossibly soft cheek again before he remembered what he'd stopped her for. "It went great," he told her softly. "They just care about you, pet. Of course they're a bit tetchy about you being all best-buddies with a soulless killer. Bloody well have to bite them if they weren't."

She snorted softly, half smiled. "They'll be different, once they've had a chance to get to know you," she said with a hint of supplication.   


"Know that, silly. Your people, aren’t they? Gotta be decent hearts in them. You attract it, luv. Draw it out in people." He glanced skyward, teasing, "Then again, you  _ were _ all hung up on Angel…"

"Oh shut up," she said, smiling properly now and cuffing him over the shoulder.   


"Can we run now?" he asked, grinning. "This moody walking thing's boring."

She laughed and took off at an eager sprint, and he bounded after her.

  
  


They found a few discarded candles to re-inspect the factory by, and he went over the whole place with fresh eyes. Two sets of them; she was assessing everything speculatively too, and if he was reading her right (which he hoped like fuck he was, because it had only hit him belatedly that his determination to not be a problem for her to house could look an awful lot like wanting to put some distance between them, which he very much did not) then she was picturing how it  _ could  _ look, and wasn't entirely displeased by what she saw. Except for when they'd come to the bedroom he'd once shared with Dru, and her face had stiffened into that icy, closed look. But even then she'd let him move the tour on without a word, and made an effort to smile past it.   


"So, what do you think?" he asked, kicking himself for the very un-suave hopefulness in his voice. "Will the slayer's perky behind deign to be seated in this abode?" He slid his arms around her waist, standing at her back while she stared down at the main floor from the catwalk. Needed to hold onto her.   


She leant said behind back into him. "I think I could manage," she said lightly. "Camp out tomorrow night, then?"

"And every night after that," he said, unthought. "That you want to, I mean. Imagine you're probably missing doing the college roommates thing."

She jumped through a few expressions - most notably, happy surprise at the  _ every night,  _ and fuck, he hadn't even bothered to tell her she was welcome to move her gorgeous self in and take over, had he? They seemed to be doing everything inside out - before her face settled on soft concern. "You don't think you'll be too lonely? When I'm busy with class and stuff? My life's kind of overloaded," she said apologetically.   


"Had noticed," he told her wryly. "And, no. Think I've more than learnt what loneliness is lately, and it ain't hanging out on my own here until you're ready to patrol."   


She turned around to hug him, smiling. "Speaking of," she said after a minute, pulling back again.   


Oh he was looking forward to this. "Think I saw one of my stakes downstairs," he told her. "Hold that thought, madam, whilst I arm myself appropriately."

"My kind of man," she said with another grin.

  
  


Joyce returned the next afternoon, and covered any awkwardness of re-meeting him with a display of her peerless kind manners. She didn't remember him from a certain parent-teacher night. Until he reminded her of it, which might have been incredibly stupid and certainly made Buffy gulp, but felt like the right thing to do.   


She frowned then, making the connection, and her spine stiffened to the same lethal steel he knew so well in her daughter. Slayers were bred, he was sure of it. The supernatural part was only the icing.   


"You swing a mean axe," he added ruefully, rubbing the phantom bruise on his head and somewhat questioning his judgment in bringing this up.

"I do," she said tightly. "When someone's trying to hurt my baby."

He looked down, swallowed.  _ Really _ should have thought about this more. But it was too late to question now. He met her eyes again, his own hard with the churning of the demon beneath the surface. "Mine's meaner," he said quietly. "When I'm fighting for someone I love."

"He sa-" Buffy started.   


"Shh!" Joyce snapped at her, somehow injecting a scary amount of command into the single syllable. Buffy fell silent. "And now you love her?" Joyce asked.   


"More than anything," he told her, softly but firmly.   


For a tensely long moment she stared back at him fiercely, then she dipped her chin in a tiny nod. "I was just about to put the kettle on," she said, all well-practised politeness. "Do you still drink tea?"

"I'd-" He'd been about to say  _ kill for a cuppa, _ but now was not the moment for loose expressions of murder.  _ I'd love one _ was equally out, gravity of the discussion and all. "That would be most pleasant," he said respectfully.   


Buffy pressed her lips together tightly to hold back a relieved laugh, and he shot her a sardonic glare when Joyce turned away to fill up the kettle.   


" _ Beautiful flowers," _ she mouthed. She might have been ragging on the very  _ un _ \- big bad tone of his voice, but there was a flash of real pleasure behind it too; as though the same part of her that'd first happily swanned into a ballroom and played the fairy-tale princess to perfection was dying to draw more of these slips into courtly tones from him. Fuck, she was going to manage it, too. Well, any image he'd ever had was shot to shit anyway. And he  _ was _ courting her.   


"Indeed," he told her, all pretentious culture.   


Her eyes flashed with a burst of eager fun. 

  
  


Telling Spike to bring the takeaways had been a stroke of genius, if she said so herself. It was hard to fear a man loaded down with boxes of cheesy goodness. Harder still to maintain the idea of  _ vampire _ while he wolfed down pizza with them just as eagerly as he had the other night. Besides, it was her unbirthday party, so she could invite whom she liked, and with her in top form, everyone settled quickly to the facts that, a) she could take down any vampire at a moment's notice, and, b) she was very obviously enjoying his company.   


Of course, he very nearly came to blows with Xander when the pizza had been demolished and freed hands made it obvious that she and Spike were  _ together- _ together. The  _ nearly _ saw Xander squared off ready to throw down, which, could you say insulting? But then Spike cut to a grin and stepped back before she could intercede.   


"Cool it, doughnut-boy," he said, almost affectionately. "Slayer chose me, right? You want to start questioning her right to do what  _ she  _ wants and you and I are going to have a-" he flicked an unimpressed look over Xander- " _ short-lived _ problem. But if you're all in a state because you think I'm going to bloody break her heart, you can forget it." He sat down again, withdrawing from the argument that had seen him, Xander, and then herself all surge to their feet. "I love her," Spike said calmly, and her heart did that skippy little thrill thing again. "And nothing you could do or say can touch that."

She sat down beside Spike, smiling despite herself. God, she loved him.   


Xander stood there awkwardly for a moment longer, then sat back down.   


"So are we!" Willow said suddenly, breaking the moment of uncomfortable silence. Sitting ramrod straight and clutching one of Tara's hands in hers, she put on her stubbornly-determined-face and said, "In love. Being lovers. And if anyone has a problem with that, they can- they can just- not have one!"

Buffy looked from Willow's face, over to Tara's shy but somehow equally staunch one, down to their joined hands, then Willow's words clicked into comprehension. "Oh," she said, slightly vacantly. " _ Oh. _ "

Willow's eyes quivered with a barely-restrained nervous expectation.   


_Say something._ It was a surprise, that was all, and a stab of hurt that her best friend was obviously afraid of what she - they - might think, and _just_ _say something, quickly._ "Congratulations," she said slowly. "That’s, um, unexpected. But in a good way! The best way!"

"Good for you," Xander said warmly, before leaning forward to address Tara. "Now we know who to thank for all our happy-Willow lately."

"Yes," Buffy added, recovering her calm off Xander’s steady warmth. "Congratulations, Tara. Both of you." While Jenny and Giles added their own supportive comments, she turned to Spike.   


He shrugged casually. "I already knew."   


"You could've- I don't know, warned me so I could've planned something more eloquent," she hissed.   


He shrugged again. "Wasn't my place. Congrats, etc," he told Willow and Tara, lifting his drink.   


"I'm in love with Xander!" Anya burst out with.   


"They know, sweetie," Xander said in an undertone.   


"I'm teaching him to be as good at giving orgasms as another woman!" she added.

"Yes, yes, we're all very much in love," Giles muttered, standing up and moving towards the kitchen. "I think it's time we had this cake, hmm?"

Jenny shook her head and followed him, probably to chase up a better declaration for herself. After a few giggles that Buffy was absolutely  _ not _ considering the cause of, Jenny returned with the promised cake. "You'd better cut it, as our lady of the pointy weapons," she said, handing Buffy a knife. " _ Not  _ because it's anyone's birthday soon."

Buffy nodded her approval and accepted the blade, cutting pieces for everyone. Cake-necessitated quiet was relaxing after the flurry of tension, soothing down the atmosphere again.

She stretched comfortably afterwards. "Thank you," she told Jenny, and then everyone. "This has been the best unbirthday ever." It really had. She was all overflowing with gratefulness and lovey feelings and really they should get these goodbyes over with before she started crying or gave an impromptu speech.   


After a quick round of hugs and a check of safe methods of getting everyone home - she'd neglected the entire subject of their secret ninja soldiers all weekend, dammit, but tomorrow was a new week and she was going to charge into it to catch up - she and Spike set off for patrol and the factory.   


"And then we all lived happily ever after," she said, swinging his hand in hers as they walked. "Or, unlived, as the case may be."

He chuckled and pulled her into a kiss. It was lucky they were more than twice as effective at slaying together, because this kissing-under-streetlamps thing was seriously addictive. As was kissing everywhere else.   


"Yes," he told her afterwards. "We will."

  
  


And so the unorthodox little slayer and the wicked vampire hound wolf _Spike_ and all of their friends lived happily ever after. 

Until Tuesday, when it was Buffy’s birthday and billy goats invaded the town. But that's another tale. 


End file.
